"It's hard to see how anyone is ever going to better this User's Manual to the life of Georges Perec" - Gilbert Adair, Sunday Times. Winner of the Prix Goncourt for Biography, 1994. George Perec (1936-82) was one of the most significant European writers of the twentieth century and undoubtedly the most versatile and innovative writer of his generation. David Bellos's comprehensive biography - which also provides the first full survey of Perec's irreverent, polymathic oeuvre - explores the life of an anguished, comical and endearingly modest man, who worked quietly as an archivist in a medical research library. The French son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, he remained haunted all of his life by his father's death in the war, fighting to defend France, and his mother's in Auschwitz-Birkenau. His acclaimed novel A Void (1969) - written without using the letter "e" - has been seen as an attempt to escape from the words "pere", "mere", and even "George Perec". His career made an auspicious start with Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965), which won the Prix Renaudot. He then pursued an idiosyncratic and ambitious literary itinerary through the intellectual ferment of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s.He belonged to the Ouvrior de Litterature Potentielle (OuLiPo), a radically inventive group of writers whose members included Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino. Perec achieved international celebrity with Life A User's Manual (1978), which won the Prix Medicis and was voted Novel of the Decade by the Salon du Livre. He died in his mid-forties after a short illness, leaving a truly puzzling detective novel, 53 Days, incomplete. "Professor Bellos's book enables us at once to relish the most wilfully bizarre aspects of Perec's oeuvre and to understand the whys and wherefores of his protean nature" - Jonathan Romney, Literary Review.
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Amazon Review
Georges Perec was one of the finest writers of the 20th century and yet his work remains relatively obscure. He is probably best known for Life: A User's Manual a book he dedicated to his fellow avant- gardist Raymond Queneau (who, along with Harry Matthews, Italo Calvino, Perec and others, was a member of OuLiPo-- an important group of experimental writers and mathematicians). He wrote the wonderful lipogram A Void a book in which the letter "e" never appears and the world's longest palindrome (in the form of a two-and-a- half page story.) He is seen by many as a true literary genius. Bellos traces the sadness behind Perec's prodigious wordplay, his confused and tragic lineage (including his mother's demise in the death camps), his entry on to the literary scene with the anti-materialist Things, his Jewish (non-)identity. Without Bellos's translations Perec would probably have remained unknown outside of France. Without this readable, compelling, exhaustive biography his often autobiographical, highly structured fiction would be far less approachable. Georges Perec: a Life in Words is a fitting testimony to a writer we should all know better. --Mark Thwaite
Review
Immense, buoyant, utterly revealing... Has achieved an overwhelmingly human portrait, as vivid as it is complex, not only of Perec but of the mechanisms, intrigues, passions and comedies of Paris intellectual life in the sixties and seventies (Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times )
A vast and heartening biography that gives unfashionable weight to the subject's playfulness as a writer, for all his deep difficulties as a man (Hugo Barnacle, Independent ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
A vast and heartening biography that gives unfashionable weight to the subject's playfulness as a writer, for all his deep difficulties as a man (Hugo Barnacle, Independent ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By "sidwizard"
Format:Paperback
The world is a much more interesting place with writers like George Perec and David Bellos. If you havent read a George Perec book then just buy one and be prepared to wonder how someone could come up with one of the novels he devised nevertheless several mind blowing ideas. He is one of the most interesting writers around and this book captures the essense of being a French writer in the Left Bank during the 60's and 70's. It documents Perec's struggle to live his dream of supporting himself through his writing and is an inspiration for any wannabe writer. I am indebted to David Bellos who compiled this excellent biography and who, without his contribution, the English speaking world would never have had the chance to marvel at the creativity and brilliance of Perec.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
David Bellos has translated many of Perec's novels and this biography displays the qualities of sensitivity and erudition which make those translations so excellent. The sections on 'Life, a User's Manual' and 'W: or the memory of childhood' are worth the price alone for shedding light on the mysterious and intricate inner processes of those classic works.
It's also a beautiful and well-produced book, and one which it is possible to dip into at any time. A pure delight for anybody interested in Perec.
It's also a beautiful and well-produced book, and one which it is possible to dip into at any time. A pure delight for anybody interested in Perec.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Big, complete, but readable
25 May 2000
By Ben Singleton
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
Bellos' big, exhaustive raccount of the life and works of one of France's most contreversial modern writers is a thorough insight, both into the family background, the struggles of a writer trying to make a living, and the works themselves. Perecs' books, peppered with clues, quizzes and games, are reinterpreted, giving the reader a new incentive to go back to the texts to more fully understand the author, as essentially a "normal" man.
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