Volume 1, Number 2 · June 1, 1963
The $6 Misunderstanding
By Truman Capote
Mobile
by Michel Butor
Simon and Schuster, $6.00
The anti-novel novelists (anti-writing writers, really) continue to be the smartest mannequins in the showrooms of Parisian haute-culture; and, to judge from the latest and cutest displays of Robbe-Grillet et cie, it would seem we must prepare for an even vaguer nouvelle vague: for example, one of the tribe, M. Marc Saporti, is currently offering an object said to be a novel which consists of several dozen unbound pages contained inside a portfolio: the pages are unnumbered, numbers being superfluous, for these pages are not intended (necessarily) to be read in sequence, or even top to bottom, or even, heaven help us, left to right. One may shift and shuffle and make of it what one will: a sort of do-it-yourself literary-kit. But Saporti, like our own William Burroughs, takes himself with utmost seriousness; and, again like Mr. Burroughs, is so taken by a sizable section of the more solemn book reviewers. And Saporti is by no means an extreme example of this fashionable school. There are other extravagant practitioners, among them Michel Butor, the author of such highly respected anti-novels as Passing Time and A Change of Heart.
Review, 783 words
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