David Bellos - Georges Perec: A Life in Words

About the Author

DAVID BELLOS is Professor of French at Princeton University. He won the Prix Goncourt de la Biographie for Georges Perec and has been chiefly instrumental in introducing this author to an English-language public. He is the English translator of Life A Users Manual (for which translation he won the IBM-France Prize). Things: A Story of the Sixties, W or The Memory of Childhood , and 53 Days , all by Georges Perec. He has also published studies of Honor de Balzac. His biography of Jacques Tati is also published by Harvill in 1999.

Immense, buoyant, utterly revealing... Has achieved an overwhelmingly human portrait, as vivid as it is complex, not only of Perec but of the mechanisms, intrigues, passions and comedies of Paris intellectual life in the sixties and seventies RICHARD EDER , Los Angeles Times A vast and heartening biography that gives unfashionable weight to the subjects playfulness as a writer, for all his deep difficulties as a man HUGO BARNACLE , Independent What Bellos provides could be called a readers guide to Perec as well as a biography ROBERT NYE , Scotsman David Bellos is definitely the man for the job. Joyces tracks have hardly been more thoroughly documented PETER LENNON , Guardian The sheer lan of Perecs technical adventures seems apparently quite beyond the wit and scope of todays British literary middlebrows. David Belloss passionate connoisseurship of Perecs life and work commands respect PETER BRADSHAW , Evening Standard

Also by David Bellos

JACQUES TATI

HIS LIFE AND ART

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Epub ISBN: 9781409019268

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First published in Great Britain in 1993 by Harvill, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Revised edition published in 1995 by The Harvill Press

This edition first published in 1999 by

The Harvill Press

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Copyright David Bellos, 1993

David Bellos asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1 86046 6362

Guildford and Kings Lynn

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For my father

Foreword to the Corrected Edition

Since this book was first published, Perec has continued to attract wide interest in France and elsewhere; numerous new editions of his works have appeared in French, a number of previously unknown items have come to light, and new translations into English notably A Void , Gilbert Adairs translation of La Disparition have been published. As this process continues unabated, it would be premature to revise what I have to say about Georges Perec or to attempt to bring the bibliographical information properly up to date.

On the other hand, I sought to correct the factual and typographical slips and infelicities in the first edition that have come to my notice. I should like to thank Gilbert Adair, Eric Beaumatin, Rossella Bernascone, Ela Bienenfeld, Catherine Binet, Claude Burgelin, Andrea Carosso, Dominique Frischer, Philippe Lecarme, Patrizia Molteni, Ian Monk and Bernard Queysanne for their help in making this second edition a little less imperfect than the first.

DB

25 May 1995

This book is a life of Georges Perec, the author of Life A Users Manual , one of the most exhilarating works of fiction ever to have been written. Perec often likened literature to a jigsaw puzzle, and once, with a chuckle, cast himself in the same light: All I know is that the puzzle is called The Life and Works of Georges Perec, he said. But I dont know what the solution is.

Contents

Acknowledgments

The University of Manchester and the British Academy supported some of the costs of the research that led to the writing of this book, and their assistance is gratefully acknowledged.

Eric Beaumatin guided me through the collections of the Association Georges Perec, and I received much-needed help at the Bibliothque de lArsenal.

I received assistance from a great number of people in my search for the traces of Georges Perec in libraries and archives of different kinds in many parts of the world: in Australia, from Margaret OHagan at Queensland University Library, and from members of the French Departments at the Universities of Queensland and Melbourne; in Britain, from the Department of French Studies at the University of Warwick; in France, from Marcel Benabou on behalf of OuLiPo, from Olivier Btourn at Editions du Seuil, from Madame Bonazzi at the Archives Nationales, from R. P. Bonvallet at Villard-de-Lans, from the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, from Lieutenant-Colonel Destours at the Caserne de Reuilly, from Madame Anne-Marie Duhard at the Ministry of Defence, from Robert Gallimard at Editions Gallimard, from Professor Andr Hugelin and the secretarial staff of CNRS LA 38 at CHU Saint-Antoine, from Thrse Mairesse at Editions Denol, from Mmoire Juive de Belleville, from M. Niborsky at MEDEM, from Madame Pezet at Radio-France, from Madame Rivaud at Lyce Henri-IV, and from the Croix-rouge franaise in Paris and Grenoble; in Germany, from Dr Robert Karge, Steffie Hoster, and Petra Stein at Saarlndischer Rundfunk, Saarbrcken, from Verlag der Autoren in Frankfurt-am-Main, and from Herr Treichel at the Landesrentenbehrde Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dsseldorf; in Italy, from ACIF in Bologna; in Tunisia, from the British embassy; and in Yugoslavia, from Kasimir Klari at Radio Zagreb and from Katarina Ciri-Petrovi at Novi Sad.

I was fortunate to have a research assistant during the first two years (198890) of the work which led to this book: Patrizia Molteni gave invaluable support during that time, and has been a treasured collaborator ever since. I was also able to call on the expertise of other colleagues at the University of Manchester and elsewhere, among them Professor Philip Alexander (Jewish Studies), Helmut Weber (German), Terry Lewis (French), Steve Wharton (documentary film), David Shepherd (Russian), and Claudia Nocentini (Italian). Christiane Dancie shared with me the results of her research in and around Etampes. I also gained many insights from work done by students in my department, notably Jane Byrne, Susan Glover, and Heather Mawhinney.

Many letters, manuscripts, and other items relating to the life and work of Georges Perec are in the possession of individuals, and I am grateful to the many who allowed me to consult, transcribe, photocopy, and on occasion even to borrow documents: in America, Laurent de Brunhoff and Kate Manheim; in Australia, Jacques Birnberg and Jean-Michel Raynaud; in Belgrade, Milka anak-Medi and Mladen Srbinovi; at La Rochelle, Jean Duvignaud; in Paris, Pascal Aubier, Stella Baruk, Claude Berge, Catherine Binet, Robert Bober, Christian Bourgois, Marie-Claude de Brunhoff, Henri Chavranski, Philippe Drogoz, Dr Henry Gautier, Pierre Getzler, Alain Gurin, Philippe Gurinat, Serge Klarsfeld, Bernard Quilliet, Bernard Queysanne, Bianca Lamblin, Sylvia Lamblin-Richardson, Jacques Lederer, Christine Lipinska, Bruno Marcenac, Michel Martens, Harry Mathews, Jean Mailland, Bernard Mirabel, Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Dr Suzanne Tyc-Dumont, Paul Virilio, and Grard Zingg; in Saarbrcken, Eugen Heimle; at Saint-Jean-de-Sauves, Huguette Morals; and at Saint-Pierre-du-Vauvray, Suzanne Lipinska. Marc Zaffran at Souill, Wolfgang Schenck at Davos, Claus Henneberg at Hof, and Johann-Maria Kamps at Cologne sent me copies of precious documents and tape recordings. From Australia, C. B. Thornton-Smith sent me a tape recording of Perecs talk at the University of Adelaide. In New York, Saul Steinberg himself found and sent me a copy of The Art of Living .

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