Perec was one of the founding members of the Oulipo, a group of 20 or so French authors, philosophers, mathematicians, and other scholars who formed the group in the 1960’s in Paris.  It was dedicated to creating works of literature that were constrained by a conceptual limitation.  Perec, for example, wrote an entire novel (English translation, ‘The Void’) in which there was not one letter ‘e’ and another novel (English translation, ‘The Exeter text’) that contained ‘e’ as the only vowel used.  Do not try either of those exercises at home!

In this fascinating and very strange little book, Perec decided to spend a weekend in 1974 sitting in various cafes around St. Sulpice, a lovely open area with a 17th C. Church (second only to Notre Dame in size!) and a fountain close to the Luxembourg Gardens on the Left Bank.  He sat quietly with a coffee and croissant or sandwich and wrote down everything that he saw, almost all of which were ‘infraordinary’, i.e. nothing special ever happened.  Buses on various routes go by, sometimes full, sometimes empty; pedestrians rush, walk, or saunter past; it rains; pigeons fly about; policemen walk their beats; crowds enter and leave the church for funerals, weddings, masses; and on and on, all of it noted carefully in this book, and all of it amounting to the sum total of the nothingness of quotidian life.  Time passes, people pass, even the 400 year old Church will eventually disappear.  Melancholy in mood, but haunting in its depiction of the insignificance of the individual and our cares and concerns.

I think Perec is one of the most interesting characters of 20th C European literature.  The child of Polish Jews who had emigrated to Paris, his father was killed in WWII and his mother perished in Auschwitz.  He spent 17 years working as an archivist in a neurophysiological research institute during which time he wrote a Prix Medicis award winning novel, directed movies, and taught at the University of Queensland.  It was in Australia that he became ill, dying at age 46 of lung cancer due to his heavy smoking.  He’s largely unknown in the U.S., but I intend to read his masterpiece, ‘Life: A User’s Manual’ and perhaps the biography written by David Bellos who also translated many of Perec’s works.  A fascinating man.