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Abstract
As a first person New Novel, Michel Butor's L'Emploi du temps foregrounds narrative indeterminacy in different ways. When the narrator-protagonist of the novel, Jacques Revel, confesses his misdeeds and offers excuses for them, he is guilty of bad faith in the Sartrian sense. In an effort to deflect the blame for his wrongdoings, Revel engages in a process of fictionalization that involves the use of rhetoric. This essay provides a de Manian reading of the novel by examining the inconsistencies and the rhetorical devices at work in the narrator's discourse. The article analyzes five tropes that inform the narrator's project: anacoluthon, paralipsis, apostrophe, anthropomorphism, and prosopopoeia. It demonstrates that the narrator's detective work as well as his romance with the Bailey sisters are a fiction. Using anacoluthon and paralipsis, the narrator manipulates the chronology of events and forges an unstable relationship between fabula (story) and sjužet (plot). When he attains self-awareness, Revel uses anthropomorphism to turn the city of Bleston into a monster. Further, apostrophe and prosopopoeia allow him to inculpate the city for his failures. Revel escapes from the city, but in the process betrays himself. The essay concludes that, in (post)modern novels, the act of narration entails the narrator's betrayal.