Georges Perec

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Georges Perec
Georges Perec
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Georges Perec (7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a 20th-century French Jewish novelist, filmmaker, and essayist – a member of the Oulipo group and considered by many[citation needed] to be one of the most important authors of the post-World War II era.

Contents

[edit] Life

Perec was born, the only son of Icek Judko and Cyrla (Schulewicz) Peretz – Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s – in a working-class district of Paris. He was a distant relative of the Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz. Perec's father, who enlisted in the French Army during World War II, died in 1940 from unattended gunfire or shrapnel wounds, and Perec's mother perished in the Nazi Holocaust, probably in Auschwitz. Perec was taken into the care of his paternal aunt and uncle in 1942, and in 1945 he was formally adopted by them.

He started writing reviews and essays for La Nouvelle Revue Française and Les Lettres Nouvelles, prominent literary publications, while studying history and sociology at the Sorbonne. In 1958–59 Perec served in the army, and married Paulette Petras after being discharged. They spent one year (1960–1961) in Sfax (Tunisia), where Paulette worked as a teacher.

In 1961, Perec began working at the Neurophysiological Research Laboratory attached to the Hôpital Saint-Antoine as an archivist, a low-paid position which he retained until 1978. A few reviewers have noted that the daily handling of records and variegated data may have had an influence on his literary style. Perec's other major influence was the Oulipo, which he joined in 1967, meeting Raymond Queneau, among others. Perec dedicated his masterpiece, La Vie mode d'emploi (Life: A User's Manual) to Queneau, who died before it was published.

Perec began working on a series of radio plays with his translator Eugen Helmle and the musician Philippe Drogoz in the late 60s; less than a decade later, he was making films. His first work, based on his novel Un Homme qui dort, was co-directed by Bernard Queysanne, and won him the Prix Jean Vigo in 1974. Perec also created crossword puzzles for Le Point from 1976 on.

La Vie mode d'emploi (1978) brought Perec some financial and critical success – it won the Prix Médicis – and allowed him to turn to writing full-time. He was a writer in residence at the University of Queensland, Australia in 1981, during which time he worked on the unfinished 53 Jours (53 Days). Shortly after his return from Australia, his health deteriorated. A heavy smoker, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died the following year, only forty-five years old.

[edit] Work

Many of his novels and essays abound with experimental wordplay, lists and attempts at classification, and they are usually tinged with melancholy.

Perec's first novel, Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties) was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.

In 1978, Perec won the prix Médicis for Life: A User's Manual (French title, La Vie mode d'emploi), possibly his best-known work. The 99 chapters of this 600 page piece move like a knight's tour of a chessboard around the room plan of a Paris apartment, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.

Cantatrix Sopranica L. is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the "yelling reaction" provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All the references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes, e.g. "(Karybb et Scyla, 1973)".

Perec is also noted for his constrained writing: his 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is a lipogram, written without ever using the letter "e". It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void (1994).

His novella Les revenentes (1972) is a complementary piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used. This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes. An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three.

It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far (those containing both "e" and a vowel other than "e").

W ou le souvenir d'enfance, (W, or, the Memory of Childhood, 1975) is a semi-autobiographical work which it is hard to classify. Two alternating narratives make up the volume: one, a fictional outline of a totalitarian island country called "W", patterned partly on life in a concentration camp; and the second, descriptions of childhood. Both merge towards the end when the common theme of the Holocaust is explained.

David Bellos wrote an extensive biography of Perec: Georges Perec: A Life in Words, which won the Académie Goncourt's bourse for biography of in 1994.


[edit] Association Georges Perec

The Association Georges Perec has extensive archives on the author in Paris.


[edit] Bibliography

The most complete bibliography of Perec's works is Bernard Magné's Tentative d'inventaire pas trop approximatif des écrits de Georges Perec (Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1993).

[edit] Works by Perec

Year Original French English Translation
1965 Les Choses: Une histoire des années soixante (Paris: René Juillard, 1965) 'Things: A Story of the Sixties' in 'Things: A Story of the Sixties & A Man Asleep trans. by David Bellos and Andrew Leak (London: Vintage, 1999)
1966 Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour? (Paris: Denoël, 1966) 'Which Moped with Chrome-plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?', trans. by Ian Monk in Three by Perec (Harvill Press, 1996)
1967 Un homme qui dort (Paris: Denoël, 1967) 'A Man Asleep', trans. by Andrew Leak in Things: A Story of the Sixties & A Man Asleep (London: Vintage, 1999)
1969 La Disparition (Paris: Denoël, 1969) A Void, trans. by Gilbert Adair (London: Harvill, 1994)
1969 Petit traité invitant à la découverte de l'art subtil du go, with Pierre Lusson and Jacques Roubaud (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1969) -
1972 Les Revenentes, (Paris: Julliard, 1972) 'The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex', trans. by Ian Monk in Three by Perec (Harvill Press, 1996)
1972 Die Maschine, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1972) -
1973 La Boutique obscure: 124 rêves, (Paris: Denoël, 1973) -
1974 Espèces d'espaces (Paris: Galilée 1974) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, ed. and trans. by John Sturrock (London: Penguin, 1997)
1974 Ulcérations, (Bibliothèque oulipienne, 1974) -
1975 W ou le souvenir d'enfance (Paris: Denoël, 1975) W, or, the Memory of Childhood, trans. by David Bellos (London: Harvill, 1988)
1975 Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien (Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1975) -
1976 Alphabets illust. by Dado (Paris: Galilée, 1976) -
1978 Je me souviens, (Paris: Hachette, 1978) -
1978 La Vie mode d'emploi (Paris: Hachette, 1978) Life: A User's Manual, trans. by David Bellos (London: Vintage, 2003)
1979 Les mots croisés, (Mazarine, 1979) -
1979 Un cabinet d'amateur, (Balland, 1979) -
1979 film-script: Alftred et Marie, 1979 -
1980 La Clôture et autres poèmes, (Paris: Hachette, 1980) -
1980 Récits d'Ellis Island: Histoires d'errance et d'espoir, (INA/Éditions du Sorbier, 1980) Ellis Island and the People of America (with Robert Bober), trans. by Harry Mathews (New York: New Press, 1995)
1981 Théâtre I, (Paris: Hachette, 1981) -
1982 Epithalames, (Bibliothèque oulipienne, 1982) -
1982 prod: Catherine Binet's Les Jeux de la Comtesse Dolingen de Gratz, 1980-82 -
1985 Penser Classer (Paris: Hachette, 1985) -
1986 Les mots croisés II, (P.O.L.-Mazarine, 1986) -
1989 53 Jours, unfinished novel ed. by Harry Mathews and Jacques Roubaud (Pari: P.O.L., 1989) 53 Days, trans. by David Bellos (London: Harvill, 1992)
1989 L'infra-ordinaire (Paris: Seuil, 1989) -
1989 Voeux, (Paris: Seuil, 1989) -
1991 Cantatrix sopranica L. et aitres écrits scientifiques, (Paris: Seuil, 1991) -
1992 L.G.: Une aventure des années soixante, (Paris: Seuil, 1992) -
1993 Le Voyage d'hiver, 1993 (Paris: Seuil, 1993) The Winter Journey, trans. by John Sturrock (London: Syrens, 1995)
1994 Beaux présents belles absentes, (Paris: Seuil, 1994) -
1999 Jeux intéressants (Zulma, 1999) -
1999 Nouveaux jeux intéressants (Zulma, 1999) -
2003 Entretiens et conférences (in 2 volumes, Joseph K., 2003) -

Film

  • A Man Asleep - (film in 1973, with Bernard Queysanne)
  • Les Lieux d'une fugue, 1975
  • Ellis Island (TV film with Robert Bober)

[edit] Works on Perec

Biography

  • Georges Perec: A Life in Words by David Bellos (1993)

Criticism

  • The Poetics of Experiment: A Study of the Work of Georges Perec by Warren Motte (1984)
  • Perec ou les textes croisés by J. Pedersen (1985). In French.
  • Pour un Perec lettré, chiffré by J-M. Raynaud (1987). In French.
  • Georges Perec by Claude Burgelin (1988). In French.
  • Georges Perec: Traces of His Passage by Paul Schwartz (1988)
  • Perecollages 1981-1988 by Bernard Magné (1989). In French.
  • La Mémoire et l'oblique by Philippe Lejeune (1991). In French.
  • Georges Perec: Ecrire Pour Ne Pas Dire by Stella Béhar (1995). In French.
  • Poétique de Georges Perec: <<...une trace, une marque ou quelques signes>> by Jacques-Denis Bertharion (1998) In French.
  • Georges Perec Et I'Histoire, ed. by Carsten Sestoft & Steen Bille Jorgensen (2000). In French.

[edit] External links

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