Georges Perec's Homage to Joyce (And Tradition)

Abstract

There is clearly something very wrong with the present state of AngloFrench literary relations when the finest novel to appear in French since Beckett's trilogy remains totally unknown in Britain. I am referring to Georges Perec's La Vie mode d'emploi, which was published by Hachette in 1978 to considerable acclaim (it went on to win the Prix Medici), but which has not raised the slightest ripple over here and remains, like all Perec's work, untranslated.1 It has to be said that even in France Perec's is not a household name. True, Les Choses (1965), his first novel, won the Prix Renaudot, his second novel, Un Homme qui dort (1967) was made into a film, and a whole issue of the magazine L'Arc (No. 76, 1979) has been devoted to his work. But he remains in the mind of the general book-buying public and even of most intellectuals merely a member of OULIPO, the author of ingenious language games, books of crossword puzzles, and a novel written without the letter e (La Disparition, 1970). What is overlooked is that the guiding spirit of OULIPO was not some fierce formalist but Raymond Queneau, and that it is to his memory that La Vie mode d'emploi is dedicated. All Perec's books share Queneau's passion for the details of the daily life of ordinary Parisians, and manifest, like Queneau's, a remarkable comic talent allied to a deep human sympathy which is extremely rare in French literature.