^{Note 1} See Jean Pouillon, “Les Règles du je,” Les Temps Modernes, 12 (1957), 1591–98; Leo Spitzer, “Quelques Aspects de la technique des romans de Michel Butor,” Archivum Linguisticum, 13 (1961), 171–95; Jean Rousset, “Trois Romans de la mémoire (Butor, Simon, Pinget),” Cahiers Internationaux de Symbolisme, 9–10 (1965–66), 75–84.

^{Note 2} Robbe-Grillet, “Nature, Humanism, Tragedy” (1958), in For a New Novel, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove, 1965), pp. 49–75. For the historical origins and philosophical backgrounds of the Sein/ Schein dichotomy in the theory of literary texts, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Méthode (Tubingen: Mohr, 1965), Pt. I, esp. p. 78.

^{Note 3} Butor, who published an article entitled “Les ‘Moments’ de Marcel Proust” (written 1950–55; Répertoire [Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1960]), must surely have been aware of the thematic relationship between his novel and that of his predecessor.

^{Note 4} Butor, L'Emploi du temps (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1957), p. 117. Page references to further quotations from this edition are given in parentheses in the text, along with translations from Passing Time and A Change of Heart, trans. Jean Stewart (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969).

^{Note 5} Georges Raillard has provided a helpful series of diagrams illustrating the time scheme in “Les Figures,” in L'Exemple, published in one volume with L'Emploi du temps (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1957). In an essay entitled “Recherches sur la technique du roman” in Répertoire II (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1964), pp. 91–92, Butor devotes two pages to an analysis of the diary form as a technique for presenting temporality. After discussing the implications of a strict chronological sequence in narrative, which would imply no past and no memory, he develops the possibility of a double or even quadruple chronological sequence in diary form, involving an account of a past period of time supplemented by notes about the present. As an example of a double diary he cites the diary in Kierkegaard's Stages on Life's Way, the work that was presumably the narrative model for L'Emploi du temps.

^{Note 6} The central fictitious work in A la recherche is Vinteuil's sonata/septet. For an excellent discussion of the mirrors in Butor's own works, see Lucien Dällenbach, Le Livre et ses miroirs dans l'œuvre romanesque de Michel Butor, Archives de Lettres Modernes, 135 (Paris: Minard, 1972).

^{Note 7} Dällenbach finds that the myths introduce the metaphors into the text: “Nœuds symboliques, points d'origine et de convergence de plusieurs suites narratives, elles introduisent des zones métaphoriques dans le récit” ‘Symbolic knots, points of origin and of convergence of several narrative strands, they introduce metaphoric zones into the narrative’ (p. 17). It seems to me, however, that the production of the metaphors precedes the myths both logically and in the sequence of the text and that the myths represent the culmination of the metaphoric expansion.

^{Note 8} Répertoire III (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1968), p. 8, my translation. Butor made much the same point in the earlier essay “Recherches sur la technique du roman,” Répertoire II, p. 88.

^{Note 9} Raillard, Butor (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), p. 113; my translation.

^{Note 10} Butor is particularly interested in spatial metaphors for temporal processes (see “Recherches sur la technique du roman,” Répertoire II, pp. 95–96). He structures many of his novels around instances of the intermutation of time and space; in La Modification (1957) and Degrés (1960), for example, he chooses the situational units of a train trip and a week at a lycée, in which time and space are mutually defining dimensions.

^{Note 11} By the end of the novel Revel uses “the map” as a metaphor for the impenetrability and even deceptiveness of things around him that resist his clarifying spirit. “Map” becomes a synonym for “mask.” Revel describes the various photographs of George Burton on the backs of Burton's various detective novels as “maps” and “masks” because they all disguise the true identity of the author (p. 404).

^{Note 12} It is not to be assumed that Butor is punning unconsciously. In his essay “Le Roman et la poésie,” in writing about ancient texts, he adds for clarification: “textus: tissu, enlacement, contexture” (Répertoire II, p. 18). L'Emploi du temps abounds with references to itself; I have singled out those that appear to me most important for mention in this essay. Trevor Field shows in his excellent article “Les Anagrammes révélatrices de L'Emploi du temps,” Australian Journal of French Studies, 12 (1975), 314–25, how the novel is full of anagrams for “livre,” “wrote,” “words,” “texte,” and the like.

^{Note 13} Stevens, The Necessary Angel (New York: Vintage, 1951), p. 83.

^{Note 14} Butor is of course aware of the double meaning of “reflection.” He writes in “La Critique et l'invention,” Répertoire III, p. 17, that the activity of the writer “va se réfléchir [instead of ”refléter“] comme dans un miroir” ‘will be reflected as in a mirror.‘ He also puns on “réflexion” in “Intervention à Royaumont,” Répertoire, p. 271.

^{Note 15} Butor, “Recherches sur la technique du roman,” Répertoire II, p. 97; the translation is from “Research on the Technique of the Novel,” Inventory, ed. Richard Howard (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 23.

^{Note 16} Jean Pouillon, “Les Règles du je,” and Peter Brooks, “In the Laboratory of the Novel,” Daedalus, 92 (1963), 265–80, find that Revel fails. This opinion is shared by Michael Spencer, Michel Butor (New York: Twayne, 1974), and Arnold Weinstein, “Order and Excess in Butor's L'Emploi du temps,” Modern Fiction Studies, 16 (1970), 41–55, but with qualifications: Spencer thinks that Revel at least achieves the insight that the past is complicated (p. 55), and Weinstein finds that at the end Revel finally does succeed in seeing Bleston as it really is, which is Revel's own opinion (p. 52). Leo Spitzer accounts for the puzzling end of L'Emploi du temps by diagnosing Revel as schizophrenic (p. 195). As will be seen, I do not agree wholly with any of these interpretations of the novel's ambiguous end.

^{Note 17} The view that the New Cathedral symbolizes either Butor's or Revel's L'Emploi du temps is shared by several critics. Spencer calls it a “paradigm” for the novel (p. 58) and Dällenbach “une image préfigurative” for Revel's work (p. 21), while Georges Raillard, in Butor, calls the book “le Temple-Livre” (p. 119). Weinstein interprets the church differently, as a symbol for the “real Bleston” that Revel finally sees (p. 52).

^{Note 18} “Les Œuvres d'art imaginaires chez Proust,” Répertoire II, p. 291.

^{Note 19} In an interview published in 1974 Butor explicitly relates the “gaps” he perceives in reality to those in L'Emploi du temps: “Reality is not a continuous thing; it is full of holes…. We fill the gaps of reality with fiction…. When Revel does his writing, it is also full of gaps; and the book is finished with a hole: the last day of February is a leap year” (Kathleen O'Neill, “On Passing Time,” Mosaic, 8 [Fall 1974], 3536).

^{Note 20} Butor, “La Critique et l'invention,” Répertoire III, pp. 12, 9, 17.

^{Note 21} Butor says in an interview: “Je fais très attention au titre; le titre est un mot qui est en plus gros que tous les autres mots du livre, c'est comme si ce mot était répété 100 fois ou 1000 fois. Donc, je choisis les titres soigneusement” (Georges Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Michel Butor [Paris: Gallimard, 1967], p. 11). He says that L'Emploi du temps is a pun and demonstrates how the pun in Passage de Milan works (p. 136).

^{Note 22} Spitzer interprets the title in another way, as an ironic reference to James Jenkins' “schedule,” which is his alibi for the murder attempt. Since Jenkins, though legally innocent, is not free from guilt morally, his timetable symbolizes the uselessness of trying to achieve the truth by reconstructing time (pp. 183–84).

^{Note 23} “Le Roman comme recherche,” Répertoire, p. 9; the translation is from “The Novel as Research,” Inventory, p. 28.

^{Note 24} Helmut Heissenbuttel and Heinrich Vormweg, Briefwechsel über Literatur (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1969), p. 65. Heissenbuttel considers nineteenth-century realism just one form of literary hallucination.