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Title: Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec, David Bellos ISBN: 0-87923-751-1 Publisher: David R Godine Pub. Date: September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (24 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Seat Yourself At The Puzzle...
Comment: Perec would properly be regarded as an experimentalist and this novel, like his others, was written under self-imposed constraints.
The novel takes as its plan a block of flats in a Parisian suburb, a 10 x 10 grid, over which the narrator must proceed by way of the moves of the Knight in chess, never landing on the same flat twice(this, like other formalities, were allowed to be bent but let's not get too complicated...) with a whole system for information, knowledge and learning to be allocated to each chapter.
'So far, so what' might be the natural response to this were it not for the majesty of the finished novel.
Read in translation the writing is formal yet intimate and seems to proceed at its own leisurely pace as it moves through the block of flats, through life. Numerous 'Tales' are recounted as the novel progresses, each rich in feeling and poignancy though sometimes disturbing, the key of which, indeed the key to the novel, is 'The Tale of the Man who painted watercolours and had puzzles made out of them'. To go into detail would spoil the effect for other readers but this is about life, about a plan for life and ultimately a metaphor for life. And the making of this book.
I have to confess to a love for French literature generally. It seems possible to trace an organic progression and tradition (the blanket phrase that readily comes to mind is 'intellectual pessimism'...)through its history which is then disrupted every once in a while by an individual who rebels against that tradition (Rimbaud) or subverts it (Mallarme or Aragon). Perec, arguably, both is and is not of this tradition.
He is however, in the wider tradition of great literature. And seems to recognise this. 'Life...' is crammed with literary puns ( an advertisement in a shop for 'Souvenirs' by Madeleine Proust anyone...) and what Perec refers to as 'unacknowledged quotations'. Which is how the novel manages to begin exactly where 'Ulysses' ends (with the symbolic word 'Yes'...) and how 'The Tale of the Acrobat who did not want to get off his trapeze ever again' manages to have its origins in Kafka's short story 'First Sorrow'. And so on...Perec provides a list of authors used at the end.
And an Index of the individual stories. Which is really what you must read this for. For the stories. Because they will excite, depress, frustrate and elate. Because Perec was not kidding with that title. All of life is here. In all of its wonder and sadness. It is not a 'User's Manual' in that it gives pat answers to complex problems, what it does do is far more difficult. And brave. It suggests over and over why life is worth living and how beauty and wonder surround not only the everyday but the tragic too.
Yes, it really is that good...
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant! A Must Have Life-Changing Book
Comment: I read this book when it was first translated in the USA - I saw the title on a shelf in our library and couldn't resist it. A decade later, images from this unique novel still haunt me, and when asked that infamous desert island question - this is the one novel I would take with me. Read it. Savor it. And don't miss the linguistic jokes he has woven so brilliantly into his tapestry.
Rating: 5
Summary: wonderous
Comment: This is a masterpiece.
Georges Perec is a master.
Read this book.
Read Void. (Why is void out-of-print -- a disgrace)
Read W or the Memory of Childh.
Read all Perec.
Your imagination will thank you.
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Title: Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau, Barbara Wright ISBN: 0811207897 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Pub. Date: February, 1981 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (Twentieth Century Classics) by Georges Perec, John (Editor & Translator) Sturrock ISBN: 0140189866 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature (French Literature Series) by Warren F. Motte, Italo Calvino, Harry Mathews ISBN: 1564781879 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr Pub. Date: May, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Zazie in the Metro (Penguin Classics) by Raymond Queneau, Barbara Wright, Gilbert Adair ISBN: 0142180041 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 30 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: W or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec, David Bellos ISBN: 1567921582 Publisher: David R Godine Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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