Abstract: It was in his last novel, Degrés, that Michel Butor expressed the desire for America; but it is in Mobile that this desire materializes formally through using the genre of the study, situated between essay, poem, and novel. Modelled on a catalogue, Mobile recounts an epic tale. Not so much the story of heroic or mythical acts but rather a recital of detail, small things seen and heard, linking the excessiveness of the American continent to the miniscule.
