Mobile: A Novel (French Literature Series) - Tapa blanda

"With a lexicographer's zest for words, Butor...captures the tone of American cliches, suggests an almost dizzying sense of space and variety, and brings into ironic juxtaposition elements of primitiveness and sophistication that are part of the American myth."

A gifted disciple of French anti-novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, Butor is notable because he uses a different technique with every book and turns out intense and interesting fiction just the same.

With a lexicographer's zest for words, Butor . . . captures the tone of American cliches, suggests an almost dizzying sense of space and variety, and brings into ironic juxtaposition elements of primitiveness and sophistication that are part of the American myth.

Mobile is the result of the six months Michel Buton spent traveling across America. The text is composed from a wide range of materials, including city names, road signs, advertising slogans, catalog listings, newspaper accounts of the 1893 World's Fair, Native American writings, and the history of the "Freedomland" theme park. Butor weaves bits and pieces from these diverse sources into a collage resembling an abstract painting (the book is dedicated to Jackson Pollack) or a patchwork quilt, by turns humorous and quite disturbing. This "travelogue" captures - in both a textual and visual way - the energy and contradictions of American life and history.