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Yesterday’s afternoon mail brought with it two Georges Perec books that Godine just brought out: a new edition of Life A User’s Manual and Thoughts of Sorts, a collection of essays published posthumously in France in 1985. And which, according to the jacket copy, “completes the Godine list of Perec’s great works translated into English.”
The other Perec books available from Godine are:
W of the Memory of Childhood
Things: A Story of the Sixties & A Man Asleep
‘53 Days’
Three by Perec
and _ A Void_
This really is the summer of Perec—in addition to the Godine books, the spring issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction is dedicated to Perec and includes pieces by Harry Mathews, David Bellos, Marcel Benabou, and Jacques Roubaud, along with a few pieces by Perec himself (“Statement of Intent,” “The Machine,” “The Doing of Fiction,” and “Commitment or the Crisis of Language”).
Perec’s a long-time favorite of mine. I came to him via Raymond Queneau and an obsession with the Oulipo. In face, Perec’s A Void, a lipogram novel that excludes the letter E, is probably the most famous example of an Oulipian constraint. Although the constraints governing Life (see this helpful Wikipedia page for some details, although the Oulipo Compendium has a much more detailed analysis involving the “knight’s move” and the clinamen) are much more complex and, in my opinion, resulted in a richer, more fulfilling book.
I’m definitely going to reread Life at some point this fall (I can see myself going on a Perec bender at some point . . . some point after the Best Translated Book stuff is over that is), and hopefully will write a much longer, more in depth post about the novel. In the meantime, we already have one excellent review of Life on the website: Bob Williams wrote this piece for us back some time ago. And equally as interesting as the review itself are these two Flickr pages that Sam Golden Rule Jones posted in the comments section. This one is Perec’s map of the apartment building in the book, and this one is Gabriel Josipovici’s enhanced version.
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
