Mobile

I couldn't help but notice that there were no reviews, not even professional ones, of this book, and it's too good not to have some description available here. I first read Mobile in the sixties, in French, and in spite of a failing memory for the language, re-read it recently. (I'm ordering this translation, too, curious to see how it reads in English) Written in the era of Rauschenberg and Pop collage, the book is a pastiche, alternating between short, dry notes seemingly made as the writer travels across America, and excerpts, sometimes fascinating, sometimes damning, always revealing, from our own documents. Audubon's diaries, Sears catalogs, treaties with Indian tribes, billboards, all kinds of quotations are included to create a portrait of the country. Butor seems to be arguing that only thereby can a likeness be created that is true to our nature. Mo-BEEL, or mobile: fragmentary, disjointed, contradictory, hypnotic, always on the move. This wry inventory, although (as is true of all books that quote pop culture) somewhat dated, deserves to be more widely known here. We Americans are notoriously self-involved; ever since deToqueville we have been fascinated not only with questions of our own identity but the way foreigners see us, and Butor fulfills that promise with a fascinating interpretation, not sociology but art. His entries definitely stack the deck--the 60s counterculture flourished in France as well as the U.S., after all-- but this is no easy hatchet job. The author seems as fascinated by American excesses, lapses and foibles as he is judgmental. Forget Baudrillard: this is much more engaging.