Georges Perec

Biography

His/her father, Icek Perec (1909 - 1940), and his mother, Cyrla Szulewicz (1913 - 1943), both Jews of Polish origin, marry in 1934. Georges Perec is born saturdays March 7th 1936 towards 21:00 in a maternity from the 19 {{E}} district from Paris. He will pass his early childhood street Vilin to Ménilmontant.

Icek Perec succumbs of its wounds in June 1940. In 1941 a train of the Croix-Rouge takes along Georges Perec towards Villard-with-Lans, where it will pass the remainder of the war with part of his paternal family. His/her mother disappears in deportation in 1943. It turns over to Paris in 1945 where it is adopted by the sister of its father, Esther Bienenfeld, and her husband.

Of 1946 with 1954, it makes its studies at the elementary school of the street of Bauches (Paris XVI), not far from famous number 7, before integrating the Lycée Claude-Bernard then the college of Étampes. It starts a psychotherapy with Francoise Dolto in 1949. In 1954, after a Hypokhâgne with the College Henri-Iv, it begins studies of history which it gives up quickly. In 1956, it begins a Psychanalyse with Michel of Me Uzan.

Of 1958 with 1959, it makes its Military service with Pau, in a regiment of parachutists. In 1960, it Marie with Paulette Pétras then it is left for Sfax in Tunisia from where it returns the following year. It becomes in 1962 Documentaliste in Neurophysiologie with CNRS. In 1965, it gains the Prix Renaudot for the things then, in 1967 it enters to the Oulipo. Of 1971 with 1975 it makes a psychoanalysis with Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. In 1976 it publishes cross Mots at weekly intervals in the newspaper the Point . In 1978, it publishes the Life directions for use and, following the success of this work, it leaves its employment at CNRS to devote itself entirely to the writing.

It spends the six last years of its life with the scenario writer Catherine Binet of which it produces the film the Plays of the Dolingen countess of Graz . He dies of a Cancer of the bronchi the March 3rd 1982 at the hospital of Ivry and rests from now on with the Columbarium Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise to Paris. There will be many posthumous publications of novels and regroupings of texts.

Its work

Georges Perec made known himself as of the publication of its first novel, the Things. A history of the Sixties , published by Maurice Nadeau in his collection of the new Letters, at Julliard. This work, which restored the air of time with orée of the consumer society, was crowned by the Prix Renaudot and met a sharp success.

Having signed at Denoël for its three next books, it surprised with its opus according to, Which small bicycle with chrome handlebar at the bottom of the court? . The criticism, which did not find the author that she knew - a fine observer of the daily life - in this novel wrongfully drolatic, with the tone primesautier, with comic in particular based the recurrence of an onomastic uncertainty, which more is equipped with an index learnedly incomplete, was diverted: it did not hold the best reception for him.

The following novel, a Man who sleeps , portrait of an urban loneliness inspired as much by Kafka than by the Bartleby of Melville, completed to classify its author among the unclassable ones. What the publication of Disappearance confirmed. Beyond the extravagant lexicographical prowess of this novel lipogrammatic, the distorsions which the language in this novel undergoes are with the measurement of its set of themes: the absence, and the pain which it generates.

Like other French authors of the Sixties, Georges Perec also has, in Germany, a radiophonic activity of author. Its part Die Maschine (with Eugen Helmlé) gains a great success during its diffusion by the Saarländischer Rundfunk. It will be followed of four other parts, of which some will be also played theater in France ( Wucherungen , become the Increase for the setting in scene of Marcel Cuvelier in February 1970).

After the publication of Disappearance , Georges Perec publishes in collaboration a treaty on the Jeu of Go, which it practices in particular with the Moulin of Andé. It carries out face several work of writing - of which some ( the Tree , Lieux ) will not succeed.

It practices the feuilletonnesque writing starting from the 81e number of the literary Quinzaine , the semi-monthly of Maurice Nadeau, where it delivers what will become the fictional part of W or the memory of childhood . But the blackness of its invention diverts the assistantship; having difficulties of writing in addition, Georges Perec stops this periodic publication.

In 1974, Georges Perec will carry a Man who sleeps with the screen, in collaboration with Bernard Queysanne. The interpretation of the single actor of film, Jacques Spiesser, the work of the band its of the film Philippe Drogoz (which was even diffused with the radio!) as band image of Bernard Zitzermann are remarkable.

Georges Perec forgets the romantic form by publishing the relation of 124 of his dreams ( the obscure Shop , 1973) and a book examining his report/ratio with space, of that of white page to the space of the sidereal vacuum, while passing by urban space ( Espèces of spaces , 1974).

Then it completes finally W or the memory of childhood , which appears in 1975. Very estimated, this large modern novel obtains a critical success which places its author among best of its time. The binary alternation (ternary in the first manuscripts) of an Olympic fiction fascisante and a fragmentary autobiographical writing leans a collective history phantasm with the singular destiny of the orphan who is the author.

The dedication awaits Georges Perec in 1978, during the publication of the Life directions for use . This work, which raises in cover the word “novels” - in the plural - obtains the Prix Médicis and a great public success, which makes it possible its author to be exclusively devoted to its art: it gives up its work of documentalist. But there remain to him only a few years to be lived.

It produces film of his partner, Catherine Binet, writes the dialogs of another ( Black series of Alain Corneau, 1978), voyage, gives conferences, verbicrucise with regularity, films with Ellis Island with Robert Bober the exploration of their Jewish roots, publishes a long news in the collection the romantic Moment at Balland ( a Cabinet of amateur ), poems ( the Fence ) and a first volume of plays (remained single) at Hachette.

But it does not complete its novel 53 days, whose title refers to time that the drafting of Chartreuse required of Stendhal.

Some lexicographical prowesses of Georges Perec

In the number of its most remarkable exercises of style appear in particular:

a novel lipogrammatic of three hundred pages, Disappearance (1969), written without using the letter E.

And yet, as entrusted it Georges Perec “there is full with E in Disappearance” (Dream n°95 within the obscure Shop). This confidence décontenance somewhat exégètes. If its judaïté the place did not hold that some grant to him, Perec could enough Hebrew - as of Greek - to know that the letter E is equivalent to Hebraic He and that this letter “represents the principle of the vital aspiration”, the spirit and thus the life. By the screening of this vowel, Georges Perec suggested with his readers not taking the letter of a text - it was goes away - for the spirit of this text. It was a question of an invitation to be differently read, in a infra-textual way. It is also what point celebrates it quotation, drawn from the Michel Strogoff of Jules Verne: “Looks of all your eyes, looks at. ”, placed at the head the Life directions for use. It is a question of not losing sight of the fact the discussion thread - the telegraph wire cut to Verne. But where these E can be? It is enough to transcribe the figures included in Disappearance by the letter of which they indicate the row in the alphabet. Admittedly, it is about a childish code… the same one as that whose Arsène Lupin uses, in the Plays of the sun and who delivers the solution of the puzzle to him (enigma, in fact the name of a horse, ETNA, but also that of a VOLCANO). Georges Perec had well his Maurice Leblanc, like his Gaston Leroux. He tested especially a real admiration for the work of Raymond Roussel which, even, admired Jules Verne to him. It should be noted that the word Volcan appears several times in Disappearance - printed or suggested as when Perec evokes Malcolm Lowry ( Below the Volcano ).

In fact, which the Disparition invites us to discover, it is a name, ever quoted, and which contains the letter E. Roussel had the same step in a text of great youth, entitled the Haut of the figure , writing: “One beautiful day, the mania of sciences having begun again to me, I had gone to sound at the small ground floor of Volcano, whose old lessons had left me a memory of great clearness”. ( How I wrote some of my books ). This pseudonym masks some another dissimulating the civil statue of that for which Raymond Roussel made build - data base Richard Wallace - an intended laboratory, in particular with work relating to the use of the vacuum. And this enigma is also detected makes in filigree some in the Life directions for use, and in a more obvious way in the singular text of Perec “Comings and goings street from the Assumption”, to put in relation to “the Sight” of Roussel. Reversing this constraint, he wrote following Disappearance a novel entitled Revenentes , in which he uses as only vowel the E (it is thus also a lipogramme, since the letters has, I, O, U and there are not used there; it is even a Lipogramme of a particular kind, namely a Monovocalisme in E). However, and as its title indicates it, the novel Revenentes is a pastiche of works of Perec itself.

of the monovocalisms in has ( What has man! ), out of O ( Morton' S ob ).

the transposition in Poetry of a principle of the Serial music: not to re-use a consonant of a unit before to have made use of all the other consonants of the same unit. It will be its work Alphabets, which is a collection of onzains heterogrammatic.

a Palindrome of 1247 words which remained for a long time longest existing (cf Large Palindrome).

incredible tangle of constraints which represents the Life directions for use (1978, Prix Médicis), probably its book more led, in which Georges Perec explores in a methodical way the life of the various inhabitants of a building, according to a constraint of circulation: the polygraphy of the rider. To this first constraint many others are added, who are ordered according to a Bi-carré Latin orthogonal of order 10. Although these constraints are invisible with the reading of this deliver-puzzle, they were availability of the reader by the edition of the Schedule of conditions of the Life directions for use (CNRS/Zulma, 1993).

of the cross words and the plays of logic, created for the weekly magazines the Point and Télérama , and for the monthly magazine That interests me . Georges Perec is regarded as one of large the Verbicruciste S French-speaking people, following the example Robert Scipion, Jacques Bens and Michel Laclos.

Apocryphal book

One allots to him sometimes celebrates it Pangramme: Portez this old whiskey with the fair judge who smokes , that it would have been besides certainly able to invent (each consonant is there only once, and the unit forms an alexandrine with metric perfect, kind of constraints which it affectionnait), but which was published in a Belgian magazine for children (Mickey-Magazine) in 1957. It is on the other hand in an unquestionable way the author of the pangramme lipogrammatic according to: “Let us carry ten good whiskeys to the lawyer goujat who smoked with the zoo”, “postscript completely seizing” of the sixth chapter of Disappearance .

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