Reading Order
La ModificationLa Modification Reading Order
La Modification (A Change of Heart, 1957) by Michel Butor won the Prix Renaudot and is the most widely read of the nouveau roman novels outside specialist circles — a novel narrated entirely in the second person ('vous'/'you'), in which a Parisian executive named Léon Delmont is on a train from Paris to Rome to tell his mistress Cécile that he is leaving his wife and will bring Cécile back to Paris, and who changes his mind during the journey without ever explaining why. The choice of the second person is the novel's formal innovation: the 'you' is simultaneously Léon himself (addressing himself in self-examination), the reader (placed inside the character's consciousness), and a generalized human being in the same situation. The train journey from Paris to Rome — past the landscapes of French and Italian countryside, through tunnels, past other passengers — is described with the same patient precision as the memories and fantasies that alternate with it. Butor became one of the leading theorists of the nouveau roman alongside Robbe-Grillet, and his essays in Répertoire (1960–1982) give the most systematic theoretical account of the movement.
Where to start
Read La Modification straight through — the second-person narration requires continuous reading to work as an immersive technique; reading it in fragments loses the effect of the 'vous' pronoun accumulating into an identity. The novel is not long (under 300 pages) and can be read in a single sustained sitting. Read Répertoire I (1960) after for Butor's theoretical essays on the novel as exploration.
Complete La Modification Book List
- 1Buy
La Modification
Michel Butor·1957·Start here — read straight through; the second-person narration requires continuous reading; Prix Renaudot - 2Buy
Passage de Milan
Michel Butor·1954·Butor's first novel — 12 hours in a Parisian apartment building; more conventional than La Modification but essential predecessor - 3Buy
L'Emploi du temps
Michel Butor·1956·Passing Time — the novel of an English industrial city (Bleston); a maze of time and memory; read before or after La Modification - 4Buy
Répertoire I
Michel Butor·1960·The theoretical essays — Butor's account of the novel as exploration; essential for understanding La Modification's formal program - 5Buy
Mobile
Michel Butor·1962·Butor's most formally experimental work — a 'study for a representation of the United States'; texts from different sources cut up and juxtaposed; the extreme of his formal development
La Modification — Frequently Asked Questions
Why is La Modification narrated in the second person?
The 'vous' (second person plural, which is also the polite form of 'you' in French) serves multiple functions simultaneously. It addresses Léon Delmont as himself — a man examining his own consciousness — but in the estranged form of the second person rather than the self-examining first person. It also addresses the reader directly, placing them in the character's seat on the train and in the character's consciousness. And it has an impersonalizing effect — the 'you' is more generalized than 'I,' suggesting that this is not just Léon's situation but any modern person's situation of suspended decision. The second person had been used rarely before Butor (Dos Passos used it briefly; it appears in some guidebook prose); La Modification made it available as a sustained literary technique.
Does Léon decide anything by the end of the novel?
Léon arrives in Rome without having acted on his original intention (to tell Cécile he will bring her to Paris) but without having decided against it either; what he decides is to write a book about the train journey — the book we have just read. The modification of the title is therefore not the modification of his original plan (to bring Cécile back) but the modification of his consciousness during the journey, and his response to this modification: rather than acting on either option (leaving his wife, keeping his mistress as she is), he will write. La Modification ends with the decision to write La Modification — a circular structure that the nouveau roman often used to foreground its own fictionality.
What role do the memories and fantasies play in La Modification?
As Léon sits on the train from Paris to Rome, the present journey alternates with memories of previous journeys on the same train (with his wife, with Cécile, alone), with fantasies of how his life might be if he brings Cécile to Paris or if he stays as he is, and with Roman mythology (Léon imagines himself as a figure from classical mythology at several points). These different temporal layers — present, past, imagined future, mythological — are given equal status in the narration, so that memory and fantasy are as vivid and as real as the present journey. The technique shows the present moment of consciousness as constituted by these multiple layers rather than being a simple point in linear time.
What is Butor's theory of the novel as exploration?
Butor's theoretical essays in Répertoire (1960–1982) argue that the novel is not a representation of an already-known reality but an exploration — a way of discovering what cannot be known in advance. A novel that simply describes a known reality (the conventional realist novel) is a secondary document; a novel that genuinely explores the unknown — formally, linguistically, experientially — is primary. The formal experiments of La Modification, L'Emploi du temps, and Mobile are applications of this theory: the second person, the time-maze, the geographical collage are all techniques for exploring forms of experience that conventional narrative cannot access.
How does La Modification compare to other train novels?
La Modification is the most important French train novel since Zola's La Bête humaine (1890), but the comparison shows how different the two uses of the train are. For Zola, the train is a naturalist symbol of industrial civilization and uncontrolled sexuality — it moves through a determined world. For Butor, the train is a space of suspended consciousness, a container for the simultaneous presence of past and future, a bubble of time that allows the modification to happen. The train as vehicle for psychological transformation (rather than naturalist determinism) is the modern French use, and La Modification is its defining example.
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