Scope and Contents

The text of this book was written by Butor and the etchings made by Qotbi. This deluxe edition includes additional suite of five etchings by Qotbi on Japon paper, each signed and numbered 5/10. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This is the first American edition of this book.eNotes internet summary: "Mobile: Study for the Representation of the United States has fifty chapters, and each chapter is more or less devoted to a different state, in alphabetical order, of the United States. The novel does not tell a story or relate a sequence of events. Instead, the disjointed details, mostly about small-town America, consist of information usually found in history books, atlases, encyclopedias, tourist brochures, and Howard Johnson menus. Some continuity is provided by a series of repetitions which are designed to illustrate the scope and diversity of the United States. For example, the first chapter is entitled "pitch dark in CORDOVA, ALABAMA, the Deep South" and that is all. The first word is not capitalized, nor is there a period at the end. The second chapter reads "pitch dark in CORDOVA, ALASKA, the Far North" and continues with a brief, nightmarish description of the land around Cordova. With no apparent...

Scope and Contents This is the first American edition of this book.eNotes internet summary: "Niagara both epitomizes the French New Novel of the 1950's and 1960's and bewilders readers expecting traditional plot and character development. It is a work in which very little happens in the usual sense of novelistic action; structure towers over substance and the medium itself is one of the principal messages. Simply put, over the course of a year, groups of representative and interchangeable characters visit Niagara Falls, take the usual tours (on the Maid of the Mist, for example), speak to one another or to themselves, observe the local attractions, and leave. The human action in the novel follows predictably from one chapter (which spans a month's time) to another and is as constant as the flow of the falls.On another level, the novel's action takes place in the mind of the individual reader, who must participate in the work by making judgments, listening, adjusting the volume of what is heard, and...