Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
Back of the Book
Georges Perec, author of the highly acclaimed Life: A User's Manual, was only forty-six when he died in 1982. Despite a tragic childhood, during which his mother was deported to Auschwitz, Perec produced some of the most entertaining essays of the age. His literary output was deliberately varied in form and style and this generous selection of Perec's non-fictional work, the first to appear in English, demonstrates his characteristic lightness of touch, wry humor, and accessibility.
As he contemplates the many ways in which we occupy the space around us, as he depicts the commonplace items with which we are familiar in a startling, engrossing way, as he recounts his psychoanalysis while remaining reticent about his feelings or depicts the Paris of his childhood without a trace of sentimentality, we become aware that we are in the presence of a remarkable, virtuoso writer.
We Love It Because
Georges Perec’s distant and privately humorous tone envelops the preoccupations of Species of Spaces in a fog of intrigue that adds to the human fascination regarding the topic he explores. Readers will find themselves absorbing the implications of the spaces they occupy and utilize in more thoughtful ways as yet unacknowledged.
Memorable Passage
This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbours, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of text. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than an alphabet?
About the Author
Georges Perec (1936–1982) was a French novelist, essayist, and poet whose avant-garde literary experiments and innovative approach to language have left an enduring mark on 20th-century literature. Born to Polish-Jewish immigrants, Perec's early life was shaped by the experience of World War II and the loss of his parents in the Holocaust. His most famous work, Life: A User's Manual, is a literary masterpiece that intricately weaves together the stories of the residents in a Parisian apartment building. Perec was a member of the Oulipo group, a literary collective that engaged in constrained writing techniques, pushing the boundaries of what language could achieve. His commitment to linguistic playfulness and the exploration of constrained writing techniques, evident in works like A Void (written without the letter 'e'), makes Perec worth knowing for his profound impact on narrative structure and his ability to turn language into a playground for literary innovation.
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