Species of Spaces and Other PiecesGeorges 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 humour 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. |
Contents
I | ix |
II | 1 |
III | 5 |
IV | 9 |
V | 16 |
VI | 20 |
VII | 26 |
VIII | 40 |
XXIII | 134 |
XXIV | 139 |
XXV | 141 |
XXVI | 144 |
XXVII | 148 |
XXVIII | 156 |
XXIX | 165 |
XXX | 174 |
IX | 46 |
X | 57 |
XI | 60 |
XII | 68 |
XIII | 73 |
XIV | 76 |
XV | 77 |
XVI | 81 |
XVII | 97 |
XVIII | 99 |
XIX | 103 |
XX | 113 |
XXI | 124 |
XXII | 127 |
XXXI | 186 |
XXXII | 188 |
XXXIII | 207 |
XXXIV | 209 |
XXXV | 212 |
XXXVI | 222 |
XXXVII | 240 |
XXXVIII | 244 |
XXXIX | 251 |
XL | 267 |
XLI | 269 |
XLII | 277 |
XLIII | 289 |
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Common terms and phrases
16th arrondissement alphabet beach become bedroom building Burp café camps Champs-Elysées Chinese cuisine cigarette classify closed colour Degraël door Ellis Island ENTRANCE-HALL everything example fact fashion floor Fondest love four France French Georges Perec happens Hôtel Je me souviens Jean Tardieu Jules Verne kisses letter lipogram literature live loads of friends longer look Lots of lazing Marcel Gotlib means memory metres Métro neighbourhood never novel obviously OuLiPo parachute Paris pâté perhaps play Prix Renaudot published question Raymond Queneau regards remember Robert Antelme Rue Vilin salads seems Sei Shonagon session signs simply sleep sometimes sort souviens SPACE SPACE speak stop story street sunbathing sunburnt Sunning ourselves There's things thought ticket town walking wall Weather whole words work-table write to Penguin