Cherokee marked a departure from the frequently voiced fear that traditional French cultural practices had been severely weakened by the influx of American pop culture. Jean Echenoz demonstrated in his text that French literature was perfectly capable of absorbing and transforming American influences, then incorporating them into the contemporary French novel. Paul Auster's writing, here represented by The Book of Illusions, also challenges overly facile assumptions about American cultural dominance by providing a different perspective on Franco-American literary relations, and the balance of power between the two nations in these areas. Initially, this may appear a surprising claim, since The Book of Illusions is set entirely in the United States, and there is no mention of France or anything particularly French. Yet French literature and culture are assumed by many critics on both sides of the Atlantic, but particularly in France, to have been a major, if not the principal influence on the American author. This reverses the more common tendency to see the United States as playing the predominant role in cultural exchanges between the two countries. Since the Gallic presence in Auster's work is often proclaimed, and then justified, with the airiest of arguments, one function of this chapter will be to pinpoint, in the course of analyzing the novel, specific elements in The Book of Illusions that reflect the influence of French literature. In the concluding paragraphs, I will speculate concerning a possible reason why French critics stress the importance of French elements in Auster's work.