696. Life: A User's Manual

Life: A User's Manual
Georges Perec
1978
Around 580 pages

Wow, we are saying good-bye to quite a few familiar faces on this List. Is anybody else feeling the season finale vibe? We are close to the big 700 after all. Anyway, unlike with Iris Murdoch, this won't be a tearful farewell. Maybe just a quick handshake and pat on the back.

I've been curious about this book for awhile, based on its title alone. But my library has long denied the existence of Perec, so I never had luck tracking it down. I wasn't too excited about it once I realized it was penned by Georges Perec, who always seemed more interested in adhering to pre existing literary constraints than telling a compelling story. This turned out to be the best Perec work yet, so I'm glad we can part on graceful terms.

Our main character is Bartlebooth, which I guess is an allusion to a Herman Melville story (never read that one) and a Valery Larbaud novel (who?). He is obsessed with creating watercolor paintings of landscapes, then having the works turned into jigsaw puzzles to solve. Now, this is a life's mission I can support. I would dedicate my life to jigsaw puzzles as well, if my cats weren't constantly destroying them. Anyway, he then wants to dissolve the solution in a detergent so there will be no trace of his work left behind. Kafka should have thought of that.

Perec always treats novels like they are scrapbooks, and there is plenty of that here. There's also a 70 page index, grids, and probably hundreds of other easter eggs that scholars can geek out about in their theses. I more enjoyed the story despite of, rather than because of, these devices. I liked the Twilight Zone ending and Bartlebooth as a character, even if I still don't get the reference.

This one outstrips the others by a good half mile.

1. Life: A User's Manual

2. A Void

3. A Man Asleep

4. W, or the Memory of Childhood

5. Things: A Story of the Sixties

So farewell Perec. Glad he didn't live in the time of A.I., which could easily follow all these rules he slavishly devoted himself to.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

Considered Perec's most famous novel.

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