SOURCE: Schenk, Leslie. Review of Le Japon depuis la France: Un rêve à l'ancre, by Michel Butor. World Literature Today 70, no. 2 (spring 1996): 360–61.

In the following review, Schenk praises Butor's compilation of essays focusing on Japan from a diverse group of French intellectuals, but judges Butor's commentary on the selections as “gratuitous and ultimately insignificant.”

What would the French think if a Japanese, not knowing a word of French, would come to France for three weeks and then write a book explaining the French? I should think they would be enraged. The Japanese, oddly enough, are not enraged but flattered when French Barbarians do precisely that in the other direction. Yet, surely, either nation is more complicated than can be explained by tourists ignoring the local language?

However, condescending to explain Non-French Barbarians to other Frenchmen has been a favorite pastime for generations of French intellos, the most notorious...