Butor's narratives characteristically begin with the isolation of his protagonist in one of two ways. The main character is most often cut off from his native milieu and set adrift in a foreign culture (L'Emploi du temps, La Modification, Portrait d'artiste en jeune singe, Mobile, 6.810.000 litres d'eau par seconde). In other instances, he is cut off within his own society by social stigma (Passage de Milan) or by the pressures of his work as a writer (Degrés). Separation prepares Butor's protagonists for the "initiatory ordeal par excellence": the descent into the underworld. This trial, seen most clearly in the references to Theseus, Orpheus, Aeneas, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead in the novels, is endured, either literally or metaphorically, by all of Butor's heroes. (p. 7)

The models which all Butor's protagonists seek to emulate are Aeneas, Léon Delmont's hero in La Modification, and Adoniram, the...