Georges Perec: c/d, s/d

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There has been talk of him on the 'reading at the moment' thread. There was one oulipo thread but I think he needs his own thread.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 30 May 2003 09:37 (twenty-two years ago)

has anyone read that book that he wrote without the letter "e"?
fairly impressive that it was subsequently translated into english
as i said on the other thread,i bought life:a users manual for my sister the other day
haven't read anything by him yet though

― robin (robin), Friday, 30 May 2003 10:30 (twenty-two years ago)

"A Void" is a lot more readable than you might imagine, however, "Life: A User's Manual" is where it's at.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Friday, 30 May 2003 12:03 (twenty-two years ago)

If he did the book without the letter E, how was his name spelled on the cover? I'd like to think that it was Gorgs Prc.

― chris (chris), Friday, 30 May 2003 13:25 (twenty-two years ago)

It was not.

Perec is unbearably classic. Perec wrote so I don't have to.

Search: "W, or the memory of childhood", "Things", and the "Species of Spaces" collection of shorter work; the David Bellos (sp?) biography is surprisingly readable (but then again it's by his best translater so it turns out in the same "voice" for those of us reading in English). "A Void" is indeed surprisingly readable but not his best; "Life a user's manual" is a book that I haven't gotten very far in yet, but I expect someday that will change. I still haven't read "'53 Days'" or "A Man asleep".

― Chris P (Chris P), Friday, 30 May 2003 13:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I love Life: A User's Manual and A Void - that and The Exeter Text (a novella with no vowel but E) were both brilliantly translated by Gilbert Adair. I love this kind of playful experimentation - and it's the fact that A Void isn't just a novel with a gimmick, but makes the absence of the E the main subject of the book too, that I really like.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 30 May 2003 17:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Lynskey OTM. Things was a terrific beginning, as well, but Life is such an excellent tipping-point between his storytelling jones, his obsession with the mundane, and his OuLiPan constraint-based experimentation. . . . Without question one of favorite books.

For those who like Perec, I'd also highly recommend Queneau (especially if you think Perec should somehow be funnier). Or, as I've probably said elsewhere, Harry Mathews Cigarettes -- even outside of OuLiPo I think Cigarettes, Life, and Cosmicomics are some sort of pinnacle of human achievement.

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 30 May 2003 17:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah yes, that very influential Oulipo thread. I liked A Void very much.

― Mary (Mary), Friday, 30 May 2003 17:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I haven't read Cigarettes yet, but Mathews' 20 Lines A Day turned out far, far better than I expected.

― Chris P (Chris P), Friday, 30 May 2003 18:20 (twenty-two years ago)

thanks for the matthews recommendations. what abt Queneau, what should i start with?

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 30 May 2003 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I have to admit I despised A Void, though not as much as The Exeter Test. All very interesting and noble, but not actually, you know, good reads per se. A Man Asleep, 53 Days and Things are all marvellous, though.

But LIfe... has to much that's treasurable - the anecdotes about the trapeze artist and the would-be hotelier, the rather bitter love letter near the end. His defining book, by a mile. Need to try tbis Queneau fellow, if I can find his stuff over here.

― Jamie Conway (Jamie Conway), Friday, 30 May 2003 19:25 (twenty-two years ago)

The Exeter Text was translated by Ian Monk, who didn't do nearly as good a job as Bellos or Adair (though then again it's not like I've read the original). Although "Which Moped..." is fabulous and I'd forgotten about it until I checked the translator.

― Chris P (Chris P), Friday, 30 May 2003 19:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I found Queneau's Zazie cheap in a remainder shop in England last year. It's fun, but it's all I've read by him so far.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Friday, 30 May 2003 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Of the Queneau I've read, I'd recommend Pierrot Mon Ami, Children of Clay, and The Last Days, in roughly that order. Pierrot Mon Ami is probably the most accessible, likeable, good-humored -- it opens with the title character getting a job blowing up women's skirts in an amusement park. Children of Clay is more formally playful (in the same way Perec gradually got into constraints and language-play) and also very good-humored: apparently Queneau spent some time compiling an encyclopedia of 19th-century quacks and cranks (flat-Earthers, people trying to find a rational value for pi), and when he couldn't do anything with it, he wound up folding a lot of it into this novel. The Last Days is I think the most naturalistic and serious (in tone) of his books that I've read, though it's still very sharp and humorous; largely about young Parisian students (and some puffy Parisian old men) (with funny moustaches).

(Caveat: I've not read Zazie, which many take to be his flagship -- so unless Martin and I can mindmeld and compare notes, you might need a third party to finish the rating scheme. The only others I've read, actually, are The Bark Tree and I think it was Saint Glinglin.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 30 May 2003 20:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Hang on, so it's not Bellos that translated A Void, it's Gilbert Adair? That by itself merits a look.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Monday, 2 June 2003 15:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Queneau: The Blue Flowers and The Sunday of Life are my favorites (coincidentally also Q.'s favorites among his novels). Like The Last Days (except both are much funnier) they're more straightforward and less Oulipian in narrative (meaning, whatever constraints were used I couldn't tell) and are both concerned with personal histories and fantasy and reality and how these intwine and intersect. Saint Glinglin was all right (it A Voids using the letter x - or uses it just once rather, from what I remember); Pierrot Mon Ami I thought dull after the first few chapters but I'm pretty much alone in that opinion. I loved the first 1/4 of Children of Clay but then left it on the train and haven't found a replacement copy yet :(

― chester (synkro), Monday, 2 June 2003 16:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Certainly the only translation I know of A Void is by Adair.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 2 June 2003 16:52 (twenty-two years ago)

two months pass...

revive for very selfish reasons. yes life is great and all but it's doing my head in:

(spoilers i guess? blah)

i) we're moving around the building by knight's moves but isn't Perec cheating? De Beaumont has three rooms and four chapters. The map looks almost like a 10x10 grid but there are 99 chapters.
ii) is it ever actually explained what Winckler wants revenge for?
iii) why the four-hundred and thirty-ninth watercolour?
iv) do the Gaspard Winklers in 'W' intersect with the one in 'Life'?
v) is the arithmetical puzzle on p 415 - "write the number 120 using four eights" - possible? i can do it in five /:

― thom west (thom w), Thursday, 28 August 2003 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

If I remember correctly (and I might have to break out the bio to confirm; I haven't actually read Life), yes there is cheating of a sort; the 100th room is left out deliberately, and I want to say that there is something very important there which was left out.

Hm. I can think of how to do it in five eights as well. ( (8+8)/8)^8 - 8 ). But I can't think of how to do it in four. Does it involve turning one of the 8s into an infinity?

― Chris P (Chris P), Friday, 29 August 2003 00:58 (twenty-two years ago)

it's ((8+8)*8)-8, i just realised. i kept thinking it ought to be more complicated.

but please do break out the biography. (is it the one by Bellos? is it worth reading?)

― thom west (thom w), Friday, 29 August 2003 01:08 (twenty-two years ago)

three months pass...

just finished life a users manual
i really really liked it,sometimes the detail is a bit too intense,but overall it really is a stunning book...
so many great little anecdotes..
i originally bought it as a present for my sister,because from what i had heard of it,it sounded like amelie,which she really liked...
having read life recently and also seen amelie again,my suspicions were correct...
i didn't realise there was any sort of pattern to the book though,until someone i worked with told me about it and this oulipo shennanigans earlier today...
so the narritive is meant to move like a chess piece?
any other little oddities?

― robin (robin), Monday, 15 December 2003 01:41 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

I'm reading A Man Asleep right now and it's pretty great. The simple use of the 2nd sing person makes it often chokingly gripping. But maybe that's my problem...

― Baaderonixx and the hedonistic gluttons (baaderonixx), Friday, 14 October 2005 08:41 (twenty years ago)

I have that in one edition with Things: A Story of the Sixties -- it's Things that grabs me more, I have to admit. (I'm still trying to figure out why I associate it with Les Enfants Terribles, and it's odd to watch, in there, the seed of the just-describing-furniture life-through-objects stuff that would fill up the whole of Life: A User's Manual.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Friday, 14 October 2005 16:54 (twenty years ago)

I still haven't gotten through A Man Asleep -- it didn't grab me at all.

Things, of course, is fantastic.

Is anyone going to the noulipo conference in LA at the end of the month? Other than me, that is.

― Gold star for robotboy! (Chris Piuma), Friday, 14 October 2005 17:56 (twenty years ago)

I just found that edition of Things during my Wellington debut! Hooray!

― etc, Friday, 14 October 2005 19:40 (twenty years ago)

I thikn what makes Things so splendid is that although it's politically and to some extent thematically lodged "in the sixties", it's a tale completely relevant to today's soul-less banality called existence - Things is critical not only of the hipster (I was gonna say faux-hipster, but a hhipster already is) lifestyle and the ignorance that bourgeios resistance encapsulates, but also the futility of exchanging spittle with folks called friends who would split their mother open with the champs d'elysses to move their ikea'd ass another rung up the office ladder.

― Queen George's Pecer, Sunday, 16 October 2005 11:35 (twenty years ago)

similar to many of his ouilipo pals, this author will mug infuriatingly. omitting an important unit for no actual function is flamboyantly pompous. his book 'question' is good, plainly smart and funny, and i do think adair's translation is worthy. but most of 'a void' is hollow, and no dramatist should pardon its vanity.

― _, Sunday, 16 October 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

How is "A Void" hollow (apart from what is obviously missing)? It is a sad and politically strong work! (I also don't know why you think of any mugging as infuriating -- or, I should say, I don't know what it is that you find so "mug"-ish in GP's work.) I can think of many functions of "A Void"'s notorious lack, from a fascinating gimick to an odd way of showing childhood trauma to what is simply a way to put words down if you find your wordflow stuck. A ripping good yarn, it is.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Sunday, 16 October 2005 21:48 (twenty years ago)

similar to many of his ouilipo pals, this author will mug infuriatingly.

http://www2.iap.fr/users/esposito/Perec.gif

― etc, Monday, 17 October 2005 01:24 (twenty years ago)

nine years pass...

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/apr/08/georges-perec-lost-novel/

― undergraduate dance (a passing spacecadet), Thursday, 9 April 2015 17:41 (ten years ago)

Sweet

― sonic thedgehod (albvivertine), Friday, 10 April 2015 11:03 (ten years ago)

meh

― bernard snowy, Friday, 10 April 2015 12:02 (ten years ago)

Only Bolano is allowed to publish from beyond the grave #iamthelaw

― xyzzzz__, Friday, 10 April 2015 12:06 (ten years ago)

... actually, after reading the article, it sounds pretty cool.

― bernard snowy, Friday, 10 April 2015 12:10 (ten years ago)

ten months pass...

googl

― no lime tangier, Sunday, 6 March 2016 11:59 (ten years ago)

four years pass...

Forthcoming early 2021? ELLIS ISLAND by Georges Perec, trans. Harry Mathews. Ok. pic.twitter.com/9nYjbj0nWV
— Jacob Siefring (@jsief) December 26, 2020

― xyzzzz__, Sunday, 27 December 2020 10:18 (five years ago)

I need to read more of him definitely.
Read Life A Users manual in my teens and have meant to reread it for decades. I think I wound up with a French language copy which I don't think I'd get through.

― Stevolende, Sunday, 27 December 2020 10:32 (five years ago)

Whoa!

― emil.y, Sunday, 27 December 2020 15:42 (five years ago)

That translation must have been one of the last things Harry Mathews did, unless it has been sitting on a shelf for a while.

― And Then There’s Maudit (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 27 December 2020 17:24 (five years ago)

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