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Thoughts of Sorts, one of Georges Perec's final works, was
published posthumously in France in 1985. With this translation,
David Bellos, Perec's preeminent translator, has completed the
Godine list of Perec's great works translated into English and has
provided an introduction to this master of "systematic
versatility." Thoughts of Sorts is a compilation of musings and
essays attempting to circumscribe, in Perec's words, "my experience
of the world not in terms of the reflections it casts in distant
places, but at its actual point of breaking surface." Perec
investigates the ways by which we define our place in the world,
reveling in listmaking, orientating, classifying. This book employs
all of the modes of questioning explored by his previous books, and
at the same time breaks new ground of its own, ending with a
question mark in typical/atypical Perec fashion.
Originally published in French in 1978 as La Vie mode d'emploi by
Editions Hachette Litterature, Paris--T.p. verso."
The writing methods of the mainly French authors who make up the
Oulipo are becoming better known as more and more of their works
become translated into English. This collection contains the
original story, 'The Winter Journey', and all the current sequels,
some so recent they are published here for the first time."
One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in
quest of the "infraordinary": the humdrum, the non-event, the
everyday--"what happens," as he put it, "when nothing happens." His
choice of locale was Place Saint-Sulpice, where, ensconced behind
first one cafe window, then another, he spent three days recording
everything to pass through his field of vision: the people walking
by; the buses and driving-school cars caught in their routes; the
pigeons moving suddenly en masse; a wedding (and then a funeral) at
the church in the center of the square; the signs, symbols and
slogans littering everything; and the darkness that finally absorbs
it all. In "An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris," Perec
compiled a melancholic, slightly eerie and oddly touching document
in which existence boils down to rhythm, writing turns into time
and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows
surprisingly thin.
'A problem of space first of all, then a problem of order' One of
the most singular and extravagant imaginations of the twentieth
century, the novelist and essayist Georges Perec was a true
original who delighted in wordplay, puzzles, taxonomies and seeing
the extraordinary in the everyday. In these virtuoso writings about
books and language, he discusses different ways of reading, a list
of the things he really must do before he dies and the power of
words to overcome the chaos of the world. One of twenty new books
in the bestselling Penguin Great Ideas series. This new selection
showcases a diverse list of thinkers who have helped shape our
world today, from anarchists to stoics, feminists to prophets,
satirists to Zen Buddhists.
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A Void (Paperback)
Georges Perec; Translated by Gilbert Adair
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R340
R276
Discovery Miles 2 760
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Anton Vowl is missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his
faithful companions trawl through his diary for any hint as to his
location and, insidiously, a ghost, from Vowl's past starts to cast
its malignant shadow. This virtuoso story, chock-full of plots and
subplots, shows the skill of both author and translator who impart
all the action without a crucial grammatical prop: the letter 'e'.
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Portrait Of A Man (Paperback)
Georges Perec; Translated by David Bellos
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R304
R271
Discovery Miles 2 710
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Gaspard Winckler, master forger, is trapped in a basement studio on
the outskirts of Paris, with his paymaster's blood on his hands.
The motive for this murder? A perversion of artistic ambition.
After a lifetime lived in the shadows, he has strayed too close to
the sun. Fittingly for such an enigmatic writer, Portrait of a Man
is both Perec's first novel and his last. Frustrated in his efforts
to find a publisher, he put it aside, telling a friend: "I'll go
back to it in ten years when it'll turn into a masterpiece, or else
I'll wait in my grave until one of my faithful exegetes comes
across it in an old trunk." An apt coda to one of the brightest
literary careers of the twentieth century, it is - in the words of
David Bellos, the "faithful exegete" who brought it to light -
"connected by a hundred threads to every part of the literary
universe that Perec went on to create - but it's not like anything
else that he wrote".
Things: A Story of the Sixties is the story of a young couple who
want to enjoy life, but the only way they know how to do so is
through ownership of 'things'. Perec's first novel won the Prix
Renaudot and became the cult book for a generation.
In "A Man Asleep," a young student embarks upon a disturbing and
exhaustive pursuit of indifference, following his experience in
non-existence with relentless logic.
Georges Perec produced some of the most entertaining and spirited
essays of his age. His literary output was amazingly varied in form
and style and this generous selection of Perec's non-fictional work
also demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, wry humour
and accessibility.
One of the most dazzling and ingeniously contrived works of twentieth-century fiction, an entire microcosm brought to life in a Paris apartment block. Serge Val-ne, one of the inhabitants of the apartment block, has conceived the idea of a painting which will show in exact detail the inside of each apartment within the building, every person, every object. As he thinks of his picture, he contemplates the lives of all the people he has ever known or heard about in sixty years living there. Chapter by chapter, room by room, the narrative moves around the building, revealing as it does so a marvellously diverse cast of characters in a series of ever more unlikely tales, which range from an avenging murderer to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime…
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I Remember (Paperback)
Georges Perec, Philip Terry; Translated by David Bellos; Introduction by David Bellos; Notes by David Bellos
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R305
R247
Discovery Miles 2 470
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'Perec is serious fun' The Guardian Both an affectionate portrait
of mid-century Paris and a daring memoir, Georges Perec's I
Remember is now available in English to UK readers for the first
time, with an introduction by David Bellos. In 480 numbered
statements, all beginning identically with 'I remember', Perec
records a stream of individual memories of a childhood in post-war
France, while posing wider questions about memory and nostalgia. As
playful and puzzling as the best of his novels, I Remember is an
ode to life: the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the sometimes
trivial, as seen through the eyes of the irreplaceable Georges
Perec.
Written in alternating chapters, W or the Memory of Childhood,
tells two parallel tales, in two parts. One is a story created in
childhood and about childhood. The other story is about two people
called Gaspard Winckler: one an eight-year-old deaf-mute lost in a
shipwreck, the other a man despatched to search for him, who
discovers W, an island state based on the rules of sport. As the
two tales move in and out of focus, the disturbing truth about the
island of W reveals itself. Perec combines fiction and
autobiography in unprecedented ways, allowing no easy escape from
these stories, or from history.
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