Each of the 99 chapters tells the story of a flat and resident(s) in a fictional Parisian apartment block. Perec's method is based on formal arcana that orders and organizes every aspect of the novel's structure. For example the sequence of chapters, and hence flats, is determined by use of the Knight's Tour in which a knight visits every square of a chessboard only once in succession. In Six Memos for the next Millennium, Italo Calvino tells of how he spoke with his fellow member of Parisian literary group OULIPO (Ouvroir de Litterature Potentiel) on several occasions about the 42 different elements (characters, objects, situations, literary allusions, etc) that feature consistently in each chapter of Perec's text but Perec playfully revealed only a handful of the building blocks for the contructivist approach to writing his most celebrated work.
Perec died at the tender age of 45 in 1982 but many are now discussing him in the same class as Proust, Sartre and Duras as one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century. Next time you visit Paris or find yourself in a bookshop strong on classic literati pick yourself up a copy of this work of art into being.
Labels: literature
