Life, a User's Manual by Georges Perec (1987, Book, Illustrated) 
Life, a User's Manual by Georges Perec (1987, Book, Illustrated)
Publisher: Collins Harvill
Publication Date: 1987-01-01
Language: English
Format: Book
ISBN-10: 0002714639
ISBN-13: 9780002714631
Product ID: EPID4499306
Description: Georges Perec states, "I have imagined a building that has its facade removed so that all its rooms on the street side are visible." In Perec's novel structured around this idea, Percy Bartlebooth has devoted his life to the production o...
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Synopsis
Georges Perec states, "I have imagined a building that has its facade removed so that all its rooms on the street side are visible." In Perec's novel structured around this idea, Percy Bartlebooth has devoted his life to the production of 500 watercolors illustrating his travels throughout the world. Gaspard Winckler is commissioned to make jigsaw puzzles from them--puzzles which Bartlebooth will assemble and then destroy. These two characters are observed by a third, an artist who is in the process of painting the facade-less building in which they live. Georges Perec was an important member of the Oulipo, the French literary movement that put formal restrictions on writing, of which the most famous example is Perec's novel A VOID written without the letter "e." LIFE, A USER'S MANUAL, is also an impeccably Oulipean text, making use of such formal devices as the Graeco-Latin bi-square and the Knight's Tour.

Details
Publication Date:1987-01-01
Edition Description:Illustrated

Size
Length:581 pages

Industry Reviews
"In my view, this book, published in Paris in 1978, four years before the author died at the early age of forty-six, is the last real 'event' in the history of the novel so far."
Italo Calvino

"Those who have a taste for the unusual, for books that create worlds unto themselves, will be dazzled by thos crazy-quilt monument to the imagination."
New York Times Book Review - Paul Auster

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