- Life A User's Manual Perec Gaspard Winkler Biography
- Life A User's Manual Perec Gaspard Winkler Pdf
- Life A User's Manual Perec Gaspard Winkler Free
- Life A User’s Manual: George Perec’s Occupation of the Interior French writer George Perec (1936-1982) is best known for his novel Life A User’s Manual (1978). Perec spent many years laying the groundwork for his magnum opus. David Bellos has compared the composition of Life to the organization of a building contract, in which.
- Over twenty years ago, Godine published the first English translation of Georges Perec's masterpiece, Life A User's Manual, hailed by the Times Literary Supplement, Boston Globe, and others as 'one of the great novels of the century.' We are now proud to announce a newly revised twentieth anniversary edition of Life.
Seldom you come across a book which is so magnificent in its scope, so disarmingly rich in style and variation, that after finishing it, you feel quite numb and dull. And later, when you try to reflect on the book, you are desperately short of words and expressions. Common examples include James Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Dostoyevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov”.
Recently, I’ve finished reading “Life: A User’s Manual” by Georges Perec and without hesitation, I’ve placed it in the aforementioned category.
I’m supposed to call “Life: A User’s Manual” a book, or a novel, but I prefer the word ‘tapestry’, and indeed, it is an ingenuous one. The title page describes it as “Novels”, in plural, and we’ll understand its significance a little later. The central character of the narrative is a wealthy Englishman called Bartlebooth (recently I've come to know that this is a cross between Herman Melville’s Bartleby and Valery Larbaud’s Barnabooth; such tongue-in-cheek references are abundant in this piece of work) living in a Parisian apartment at 11, Rue Simon-Crubellier. Not knowing what to do with his time or his fortune, he contrives an extensive plan which will keep him busy for the rest of his life. His plan goes as follows--
- In the first 10 years he devotes himself learning the techniques of water-colour under the guidance of Valene, who also comes to live at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier.
- Then, he starts his voyage spanning a period of 20 years around the world, accompanied by his faithful butler Smautf (an obvious reference to Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”, bringing back the sweet memories of my childhood days) and painting 500 landscapes in different ports in different countries.
- As soon as he finishes each of these canvases, it is sent to Gaspard Winckler, a clever and ingenuous craftsman (another resident of 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier) who converts it into a jigsaw puzzle, increasingly difficult in nature, and stores them for future.
- After returning from his voyage, Bartlebooth solves those jigsaw puzzles.
- Each of the solved puzzles is then transferred to Georges Morellet (still another resident of the same building) who then rebinds the paper with a special glue and restores the original painting, removing the support of the pasteboard.
- This painting, which is in almost the identical state when Bartlebooth painted it, is then sent to the port where it was painted, exactly 20 years after the day of its creation.
- The painting is then placed into seawater until the colour dissolves, leaving a plain virgin sheet of paper.
- This blank sheet is then returned to Bartlebooth.
- The whole process is repeated for all the 500 paintings.
Now, as the narrative progresses, it dawns upon the readers that the novel is set not only on the day of Bartlebooth’s death, but also, at the precise moment of his death. All the characters and objects, living in the microcosm of this Parisian apartment, are frozen in time and space by the author as he goes on painstakingly describing each of them, in each of the flats in the building, where they are and what they have been doing at that fateful moment, with elaborate references to their past, present and future. And this act of describing them is actually what the novel consists of. Probably now, the word “novels” makes some sense, because in the course of this narrative, we’ve come across more than 100 main stories (concerning all the residents and their lives), spanning almost 142 years (1833-1975).
While knowing of Perec's constraints and plan in the structure of the novel can add considerably to a reader's experience, it is not necessary to even be aware of them to read Life: A User's Manual with enjoyment. The central plot of the book is the tale of Bartlebooth, an extremely wealthy English resident of 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier. Oct 23, 2016 Inevitably, I suspect some of Perec’s wordplay and more complex puzzles may have been slightly lost in translation but the English text still remains faithful to the spirit of his prose. ‘Life: A User’s Manual’ is far from being a practical self-help guide as its title suggests.
But, what is the point of telling such a convoluted array of stories? And, moreover, what is the point of indulging oneself into such a tedious and futile endeavour like Bartlebooth? The answers are the same—NOTHING!
The most striking characteristic of this tapestry is its capability of referring to itself and its elements. The book itself is in the fashion of a vast jigsaw puzzle, similar to the ones Bartlebooth has been solving throughout his life. All the different stories and characters are the random pieces of the puzzle. As you are going through them, you engage yourself in joining them together, groping around in dark, unsure of yourself. Eventually, at the end, this tapestry emerges with full splendour.
The quixotic effort of Bartlebooth and that of the author touch upon yet another theme. However hard a person tries to attribute a meaning to an act, ultimately it is devoid of any significance, or rather, if it has any significance at all, that is purely random (remember Sassure’s “Signifier - Signified” Best paper weight for printing user manuals. duo which is random). We are nothing but preys of an illusory meaningfulness which we pursue till the end of our lives. The effort of both Bartlebooth and Perec is a mockery of this illusion. At the end, Bartlebooth dies without finishing the project, in the process of becoming aware of the impossibility of such a task.
While Bartlebooth’s bizarre project provides the central theme, 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier gives the book its structure. Supposedly, the narrative moves like a Knight in a chess game, one chapter for each room (thus, the more rooms an apartment has the more chapters are devoted to them). Perec haults in each room and tells us about the residents of the room, or the past residents of the room, or about some of their acquaintances. Perec devises the elevation of the building as a 10×10 grid: 10 storeys, including basements and attics and 10 rooms across, including 2 for the stairwell (the plan is given at the end of the book, along with a 58 pages long Index!). Each room is assigned to a chapter, and the order of the chapters is given by the knight's moves on the grid.
George Perec was a member of the OuLiPo ('Ouvroir de littérature potentielle', which translates roughly as 'workshop of potential literature') group. The members of the group were devoted to “constrained writing” techniques (Perec himself wrote an entire book without using the vowel e for once). In this novel also, there are certain constraints that he subjects himself to, like the number of lists in each chapter, number of objects etc. Unfortunately, as an uninitiated reader, I couldn’t delve deep into such numerological nitty-gritty.
The book swarms with numerous references to other authors, books and characters, including Jules Verne, Captain Nemo, Passepartout, Kafka, Nabokov, Gaston Leroux, Cheri-Bibi, Marcel Proust and so on. As a novice reader it is an unpardonable audacity to even think of uncovering all those subtle nuances, but if you can, at least, sneak a peek at some of them, you will be justly rewarded. But be careful, there are plenty of red herrings, which may soon thwart you off the track.
Another nasty twist at the end of this post! It is not Perec, who is describing all these disparate elements of a story. Rather, he is just describing the concept behind an unfinished sketch by Valene (the art teacher of our old friend Bartlebooth), aspiring to depict the building and its residents in fullest possible details (yes, along with the incidents from their past lives). Valene stops working on this painting precisely at the moment of Bartlebooth’s death!
What should be said about this one-of-its-kind book, if not diabolic?
PS: You'll find an extensive review of 'Life: A User's Manual' HERE, A short bigraphical note on Perec HERE, and Reviews of other books by Perec HERE
File:Life A User's Manual.jpg | |
Author | Georges Perec |
---|---|
Original title | La Vie mode d'emploi |
Translator | David Bellos |
Country | France |
Language | French |
Publisher | Hachette Littératures |
Publication date | 1978 |
1987 | |
ISBN | 978-0-87923-751-6 (1978 paperback, first English translation) ISBN 0-87923-751-1 (1987 hardcover) ISBN 978-1-56792-373-5 (2008 paperback, revised translation) |
Life a User's Manual (the original title is La Vie mode d'emploi) is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as 'novels', in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading. Some critics have cited the work as an example of postmodern fiction, though Perec himself preferred to avoid labels and his only long term affiliation with any movement was with the Oulipo or OUvroir de LIttérature POtentielle.
La Vie mode d'emploi is a tapestry of interwoven stories and ideas as well as literary and historical allusions, based on the lives of the inhabitants of a fictitious Parisian apartment block, 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier (no such street exists, although the quadrangle Perec claims Simon-Crubellier cuts through does exist in Paris XVII arrondissement). It was written according to a complex plan of writing constraints, and is primarily constructed from several elements, each adding a layer of complexity.
- 3Elements
Plot
Between World War I and II, a tremendously wealthy Englishman, Bartlebooth (whose name combines two literary characters, Herman Melville's Bartleby and Valery Larbaud's Barnabooth), devises a plan that will both occupy the remainder of his life and spend his entire fortune. First, he spends 10 years learning to paint watercolors under the tutelage of Valène, who also becomes a resident of 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier. Then, he embarks on a 20-year trip around the world with his loyal servant Smautf (also a resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier), painting a watercolor of a different port roughly every two weeks for a total of 500 watercolors.
Bartlebooth then sends each painting back to France, where the paper is glued to a support board, and a carefully selected craftsman named Gaspard Winckler (also a resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier) cuts it into a jigsaw puzzle. Upon his return, Bartlebooth spends his time solving each jigsaw, re-creating the scene.
Each finished puzzle is treated to re-bind the paper with a special solution invented by Georges Morellet, another resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier. After the solution is applied, the wooden support is removed, and the painting is sent to the port where it was painted. Exactly 20 years to the day after it was painted, the painting is placed in a detergent solution until the colors dissolve, and the paper, blank except for the faint marks where it was cut and re-joined, is returned to Bartlebooth.
Ultimately, there would be nothing to show for 50 years of work: the project would leave absolutely no mark on the world. Unfortunately for Bartlebooth, Winckler's puzzles become increasingly difficult and Bartlebooth himself becomes blind. An art fanatic also intervenes in an attempt to stop Bartlebooth from destroying his art. Bartlebooth is forced to change his plans and have the watercolors burned in a furnace locally instead of couriered back to the sea, for fear of those involved in the task betraying him. By 1975, Bartlebooth is 16 months behind in his plans, and he dies while he is about to finish his 439th puzzle. Ironically, the last hole in the puzzle is in the shape of the letter X while the piece that he is holding is in the shape of the letter W.
Structure
The entire block is primarily presented frozen in time, on June 23, 1975, just before 8 pm, moments after the death of Bartlebooth. Nonetheless, the constraints system creates hundreds of separate stories concerning the inhabitants of the block, past and present, and the other people in their lives. The story of Bartlebooth is the principal thread, but it interlinks with many others.
Another key thread is the painter Serge Valène's final project. Bartlebooth hires him as a tutor before embarking on his tour of the world, and buys himself a flat in the same block where Valène lives. He is one of several painters who have lived in the block over the century. He plans to paint the entire apartment block, seen in elevation with the facade removed, showing all the occupants and the details of their lives: Valène, a character in the novel, seeks to create a representation of the novel as a painting. Chapter 51, falling in the middle of the book, lists all of Valène's ideas, and in the process picks out the key stories seen so far and yet to come.
Both Bartlebooth and Valène fail in their projects: this is a recurring theme in many of the stories.
Elements
Apartment block
One of Perec's long-standing projects was the description of a Parisian apartment block as it could be seen if the entire facade were removed, exposing every room. Moto x play user manual pdf 2 8. Perec was obsessed with lists: such a description would be exhaustive down to the last detail.
Some precedents of this theme can be found in the Spanish novel El Diablo cojuelo (1641, 'The Lame Devil' or 'The Crippled Devil') by Luis Vélez de Guevara (partially adapted to 18th century France by Alain-René Lesage in his 1707 novel [[{{{1}}}]][], 'The Lame Devil' or 'The Devil upon Two Sticks') and the 20th-century Russian novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Another well-known literary puzzle is Hopscotch (1963) by the Paris-resident Argentinian novelist Julio Cortázar.
While Bartlebooth's puzzle narrative is the central story of the book, 11 rue Simon-Crubellier is the subject of the novel. 11 rue Simon-Crubellier has been frozen at the instant in time when Bartlebooth dies. People are frozen in different apartments, on the stairs, and in the cellars. Some rooms are vacant.
The narrative moves like a knight in a chess game, one chapter for each room (thus, the more rooms an apartment has the more chapters are devoted to it). In each room we learn about the residents of the room, or the past residents of the room, or about someone they have come into contact with.
Many of the characters at 11 rue Simon-Crubellier, such as Smautf, Valène, Winckler, and Morellet, have a direct connection to Bartlebooth's quest. Thus, in those rooms the Bartlebooth puzzle-narrative tends to be carried further. Many of the narratives, however, are linked to Bartlebooth only by being related to the history of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier.
The Knight's Tour
A Knight's Tour as a means of generating a novel was a long-standing idea of the Oulipo group. Perec devises the elevation of the building as a 10×10 grid: 10 storeys, including basements and attics and 10 rooms across, including 2 for the stairwell. Each room is assigned to a chapter, and the order of the chapters is given by the knight's moves on the grid. However, as the novel contains only 99 chapters, bypassing a basement, Perec expands the theme of Bartlebooth's failure to the structure of the novel as well.
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The constraints
These elements come together with Perec's constraints for the book (in keeping with Oulipo objectives): he created a complex system which would generate for each chapter a list of items, references or objects which that chapter should then contain or allude to. He described this system as a 'machine for inspiring stories'.
There are 42 lists of 10 objects each, gathered into 10 groups of 4 with the last two lists a special 'Couples' list. Some examples:
- number of people involved
- length of the chapter in pages
- an activity
- a position of the body
- emotions
- an animal
- reading material
- countries
- 2 lists of novelists, from whom a literary quotation is required
- 'Couples', e.g. Pride and Prejudice, Laurel and Hardy.
How these lists and objects apply to each chapter is governed by an array called a Graeco-Latin square. The lists are considered in pairs, and each pair is governed by one cell of the array, which guarantees that every combination of elements is encountered. For instance, the items in the couples list are seen once with their natural partner (in which case Perec gives an explicit reference), and once with every other element (where he is free to be cryptic). In the 1780s, the great mathematicianLeonhard Euler had conjectured that a 10×10 Graeco-Latin square could not exist and it was not until 1959 that one was actually constructed, refuting Euler.
To further complicate matters, the 38th and 39th list are named 'Missing' and 'False' and each list comprises the numbers 1 to 10. The number these lists give for each chapter indicates one of the 10 groups of 4 lists, and folds the system back on itself: one of the elements must be omitted, and one must be false in some way (an opposite, for example). Things become tricky when the Missing and False numbers refer to group 10, which includes the Missing and False lists.
Appendix
An appendix section in the book contains a chronology of events starting at 1833, a 70-page index, a list of the 100 or so main stories, and a plan of the elevation of the block as the 10x10 grid. The index lists many of the people, places and works of art mentioned in the book:
- real, such as Mozart
- fictitious, such as Jules Verne's character Captain Nemo
- internally real, such as Bartlebooth himself
- internally fictitious: the characters in a story written by a schoolboy, for instance
Reception
In The New York Times Book Review, novelist Paul Auster wrote, 'Georges Perec died in 1982 at the age of 46, leaving behind a dozen books and a brilliant reputation. In the words of Italo Calvino, he was 'one of the most singular literary personalities in the world, a writer who resembled absolutely no one else.' It has taken a while for us to catch on, but now that his major work - 'Life: a User's Manual' (1978) - has at last been translated into English it will be impossible for us to think of contemporary French writing in the same way again.'[1]
Life A User's Manual Perec Gaspard Winkler Biography
In a list of nontechnical books he's read, computer scientist Donald Knuth referred to this book as 'perhaps the greatest 20th century novel'.[2]
See also
References
- ↑Paul Auster, 'The Bartlebooth Follies,' The New York Times Book Review, November 15, 1987.
- ↑Knuth, Donald. 'Knuth: Retirement'. Retrieved 8 October 2012.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
External links
Life A User's Manual Perec Gaspard Winkler Pdf
- Paul Auster (1987-11-15). 'THE BARTLEBOOTH FOLLIES'. The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-03-24.<templatestyles src='Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css'></templatestyles>
Life A User's Manual Perec Gaspard Winkler Free
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