Michel Butor occupies a paradoxical situation in what we may call the hierarchy of the nouveau roman. On the one hand, he has written four novels of unquestionable though uneven merit…. On the other hand, he has published a series of brilliant articles on the theory of the novel, to be found in his volumes of criticism, Répertoire and Répertoire II, which have made him at least as important an expounder of the newness of the New Novel as Alain Robbe-Grillet or Nathalie Sarraute; yet it can be shown that all his novels except the last break very little new ground and owe much of their success primarily to Butor's mastery of those old-fashioned components, plot and characterization.

Naturally, this mastery appears most strikingly in Butor's most popular novel, La Modification (A Change of Heart) [(1957)]. (p. 215)

The scope of the novel is restricted to one man's...