A Void
Monday, April 30th, 2007 @ 04:02
by Georges Perec (1969)
Born out of a self-imposed formalist grid of lipogram, A Void is essentially a parody of thriller and noir fiction, loaded with plots and subplots, pursuits, vengeance and grim conclusions, amazingly engrossing and well-written despite the missing ‘e’ letter throughout the whole novel.
The plot itself is centred around the missing protagonist, Anton Vowl, and his group of acquaintances determined to discover the truth behind the disappearance, encountering stylistic gags, tricks and parodies. On top of the obvious parallel of the missing Vowl and the letter ‘e’, there are plenty of implicit suggestions of the constraingts: sets of 26 objects with the fifth one missing (the novel chapters themselves, a book collection, track sport nominations), playful Oulipo references to Gadsby V. Wright and Raymond Q. Knowall. The characters, as well as the readers, feels a disturbing sense of hallucinatory abnormality and paranoia (induced by the weirdness of over 250-page long orthographically-constrained prose) that’s “hard, initially, to spot any modification at all,” struggling to “pin down its point of origin” yet unable to, limited by the author’s construction.
A blind rat race that builds its own labyrinths, like Life: A User’s Manual (where traces of similar tongue-in-cheek diabolical plots, vengeances can also be found), the story is generated mainly through the “modish structuralist dogma,” and again it would be wrong to assume that Perec would only deliver an average parody thriller to show off literary gymnastics. While not as profound (and will never be as popular as Life), this is a fascinating, cleverly-wrapped novel with plenty of symbolic and semiotic stimuli and diversions. Gilbert Adair, must be credited almost as much for the dexterous translation without losing the dark humour, jest and trickeries.
May 4th, 2007 18:32
[…] The title itself is an obvious reference to Barthes’ essay — indeed, one of the main attractions of this novella is its well-concocted mixture of tongue-in-cheek facts (especially from New York school) and fictions, weaved together with the integration of the theory itself inside the story. I picked this book up after reading Adair’s excellent translation of Georges Perec’s La Disparition (trans. A Void). […]
November 11th, 2007 16:22
[…] part. Readers familiar with his other more playful novels (such as Life: A User’s Manual and A Void) might notice a lack of general Oulipo constraints, but will still find Perec’s fragile […]