Text by Butor, published 1962. Mobile belongs to none of the normal generic categories. Subtitled ‘Étude pour une représentation des États-Unis’, it is an intertextual montage of very diverse American ‘voices’. Quotations from Jefferson or Franklin are interwoven with mail-order catalogues, tourist brochures, the history of the American Indians, etc., together with fragments of fictional speech and an unobtrusive but eloquent authorial discourse. Out of all this a representation of America, seen by a foreigner, gradually emerges. The structure is complex and precise: a journey across the continent in which each section of the text represents one state and one hour of time, but the states are ordered alphabetically rather than geographically, and transitions between them are effected by a coincidence of place-names: we move from Concord in Alabama to Concord in North Carolina, for instance. This ‘mobile’ construction effectively reinstates the plurality of American culture, against the white racism which tries to obliterate black and Amerindian reality. It also sets up a counterpoint between the ideological voices of colonialism and consumerism and the repressed memories, fears, and desires which, if made conscious, could lead to the ‘liberation’ of a new America.
[Celia Britton]
