W, or The memory of childhood
Monday, April 30th, 2007 @ 03:55
by Georges Perec (1975)
A book of two alternating texts, one (written in italics) an imaginary adventure story, “an arbitrary but careful reconstruction of a childhood fantasy about a land in thrall to the Olympic ideal”; the other consisting of autobiographic fragments of wartime childhood “made up of scattered oddments, gaps, lapses, doubts, guesses and meagre anecdotes.” As the author himself noted at the beginning of the book, while the texts might seem like they have nothing in common, “they are inextricably bound up with each other, as though neither could exist on its own, as though it was only their coming together, the distant light they cast on each other, that could make apparent what is never quie said in one, never quite said in the other, but said only in their fragile overlapping”, and readers gradually become aware of the allegory of the Nazi concentration camp in the fictitious 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 sadness and fondness of rule-construction.
Note: In the first part, the narrator of the first text, Gaspard Winckler, shares the same name with a shipwrecked deaf and dumb boy whom a mysterious stranger claiming to be from a dubious organisation, Bureau Veritas, is on the quest to find. (Gaspard Winckler is also the name of the specialist craftsman in Life: A User’s Manual).
