Today would have been Michel Butor’s 97th birthday – he died just before his 90th, in 2016. I have written elsewhere in this blog about how I discovered his work, back in 2005-06, and the impact that his novel Passing Time (L’Emploi du temps) had on me, as evidenced by my blog title, many of the pieces I’ve posted here, a PhD thesis, and a couple (soon to be three) chapters in academic books. I also have something more personal than the shelves of multiple copies of his novels and other works (in English and German, as well as French) and of critical studies of his work.

In 2008, already immersed in his work and steering my undergrad assignments in his direction wherever I could, I wrote to him, hoping to start a correspondence that might enrich my understanding of L’Emploi du temps in particular. What I received was a postcard, an image cut in two on a diagonal, and then taped back together by him, with a warm and friendly message:

He writes:

Your letter took some time to reach me as I was on holiday on the Basque coast. Thank you for your interest in my books. Don’t hesitate to ask me anything, if you think my replies might help in your work. Have a great summer! Very cordially, yours, Michel.

I did write again in 2012, in hope rather than expectation, as I worked on my undergrad dissertation, and considered a PhD proposal, but I didn’t hear back. Butor’s wife Marie-Jo had died two years earlier, and I know now, as I didn’t then, how the loss of a partner has an impact on every aspect of one’s life, from the most profound to the most mundane. I can understand that an earnest enquiry about a book he’d written over half a century previously will not have been a priority.

But the impression of Butor that the postcard gave me is confirmed by many accounts of those who knew, worked with and interviewed him, and by this fascinating documentary, unfortunately not available with subtitles, but which shows a straightforward, warm and generous man, as well as a writer who experimented with language and with narrative, and whose work is richly human, who wanted, through his work, to change the reader, and to change the reader’s view of the world.

So, I am grateful for that postcard, for the thought and for the warmth, as I am grateful for the books, especially the one that has absorbed me for so long and fuelled my writing, and my academic life. That postcard is proudly displayed on my bookshelves, alongside those multiple copies of his books, and the bound copy of my thesis, and the many academic studies of his writing.

Passing Time is, of course, now available in a revised English translation, published by Pariah Press in 2021.