tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post3534485945578734469..comments2024-01-02T15:37:04.858-05:00Comments on Caravana de recuerdos: Life A User's ManualRichardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-26689241586701212162012-04-23T19:45:01.147-04:002012-04-23T19:45:01.147-04:00Just discovered this post today and it makes me wa...Just discovered this post today and it makes me want to start reading Life... again. I lent my original copy one too many times and never got it back but I found a new copy last year which is sitting on my shelves. It must be twenty five years since I read it and it would almost be a new book by now but I still remember the excitement I felt reading it. <br />The links between constraint and creativity are interesting. They can allow people to access areas of the right brain which otherwise stay inactive. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/apr/06/neuroscience-bob-dylan-genius-creativity?CMP=twt_guSéamus Dugganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00574186409184247059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-91023526774085418462010-05-04T20:38:33.174-04:002010-05-04T20:38:33.174-04:00Whoo-hoo! I'm going to read "Man on Pink ...Whoo-hoo! I'm going to read "Man on Pink Corner" tonight, and then the Perec's version again. Totally dorking out over this. :)Sarah (tuulenhaiven)https://www.blogger.com/profile/11007601900702081303noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-22881098540835470472010-05-02T13:45:26.863-04:002010-05-02T13:45:26.863-04:00*Bellezza: Ha ha, I know a lot of bloggers who are...*Bellezza: Ha ha, I know a lot of bloggers who aren't lazy--Perec readalong or not! However, the great thing about the shared reads when they work is that they generate so much discussion from so many points of view. I'm sure you know this from your own experience already, but that being said, I think living in France through <em>Life A User's Manual</em> is just as good a reason as any to read or write about this wonderful novel. Glad you enjoyed it and thanks for reading along with us!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-11925209841135862472010-05-01T20:49:44.993-04:002010-05-01T20:49:44.993-04:00Well, it's good I have you to explain things t...Well, it's good I have you to explain things to me, Richard. I took a much more superficial look at this book, not on purpose, and just lived in France again as I read it. I loved the aroma of Paris that it gave me, and the puzzle maker's dilemna which I tried to address on my post. I feel greatly enriched by this reading though, and at least you know some bloggers who are not lazy. ;)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-38408308193633956592010-05-01T15:13:12.451-04:002010-05-01T15:13:12.451-04:00*Claire: Ha ha, thanks (although I changed the blo...*Claire: Ha ha, thanks (although I changed the blog settings back to Spanish again today since "the month of Perec and Proust" is now over)! Anyway, yeah, the <em>Oulipo Compendium</em> and <em>The 1001 Nights</em> are strange companions, aren't they? And Perec is WAY interesting on the puzzle and plagiarism fronts even though his storytelling skills are mad even without the stunts and in-jokes and riddles. Speaking of which, the basic idea with the constraints table is that Perec made 21 paired lists of components that needed to be worked into each chapter (or 42 components per chapter) to be used according to the 10 x 10 grids corresponding to the different room locations. The constraints map combination determined most of the various types of details (author citations, styles of furniture or music to be mentioned or described, etc.) to be used to flesh out each chapter, although there was an element of free choice on certain chapters. I'll have to keep looking for a better explanation since I'm not quite up to the task myself, I'm afraid!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-11942265222693408692010-05-01T09:24:07.435-04:002010-05-01T09:24:07.435-04:00What???!! Richard, you are flipping on the Oulipo ...What???!! Richard, you are flipping on the Oulipo Compendium!! You are too much! (But that's why I love you, friend.) :D<br /><br />And you are so funny, reverting your blog to French. LOL! I couldn't understand that French table so much, so if you could find an English one, please. Still, how fascinating. The creative plagiarism I was feeling throughout but could not find the proper term for it. But don't all writers do that? Just not as openly and blatantly as Perec did. Stories are being recycled in novels everyday.<br /><br />And that bit about the girl, thank you for the explanation! I had read in comments between Julia and Isabella that the reason for the 99 chapters was a girl in the middle and I was trying to find her and couldn't, before.<br /><br />I do agree with what you said to E.L. I didn't even think about his constraints while reading, just enjoyed it. And that's the whole point, isn't it? Perec might've made his book a puzzle for the reader to connect and piece together, but, unlike a real jigsaw puzzle where you have to piece everything together to appreciate the whole, this novel can be enjoyed in the bits and pieces (although he does put them together himself in the end, so we get to see everything converge). I have not read Decameron nor Ovid's Metamorphoses but am thrilled to see we both mentioned the 1,001 Nights. (I am so shallow.)clairehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14397226316253896335noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-75679298697756876762010-05-01T01:13:31.776-04:002010-05-01T01:13:31.776-04:00*Isabella: Ha ha, present company excepted, of cou...*Isabella: Ha ha, present company excepted, of course! I've been flipping through the <em>Oulipo Compendium</em> off and on during my reading of Perec, and the book is filled with bizarre stats and descriptions of all kinds of other clinamenesque oddities. So glad you asked about the "defective" move on the Knight's Tour, though, because the solution to the petit-beurre mystery is almost too good to be true!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-90122104903350585182010-05-01T01:06:03.291-04:002010-05-01T01:06:03.291-04:00*E.L. Fay: For me, one of the beauties of this wor...*E.L. Fay: For me, one of the beauties of this work is that you don't need to know anything about Perec's constraints to enjoy the storytelling or the delivery. However, I've gotten a kick out of reading about the constraints because they are just so wacky. But I would have enjoyed the way the narrative was actually delivered without any knowledge of the Knight's Tour, for example. I just thought it was cool! As far as the postscript goes, there's no reason to feel any embarrassment for not noticing it before you were supposed to. Some of us noticed it before the end, some of us didn't. No biggie. And your point about the author communicating in a shared language isn't corny at all. I think Perec was writing to amuse himself and his friends and any other readers willing to play the game with him in that manner. Nothing novel there. What's different with Perec is the number of inside jokes, embedded "clues," and the sense of humor. And as a group, we probably missed most of the allusions, which is something that cracks me up!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-84392389119716128532010-05-01T00:38:37.782-04:002010-05-01T00:38:37.782-04:00*Frances: Glad you loved this, too, and can certa...*Frances: Glad you loved this, too, and can certainly relate to the "done but not done" feelings you describe! While I loved the wildness, the extravagance, and sometimes just the simple mundanity of the lists and fake bibliographies and whatnot, I also enjoyed how the fictional world was "grounded" in something approaching a humdrum reality with all the day to day detritus described. Felt it was a particularly combustible blending of the real and the fictional in some way. Hope you write a second post about all this but will understand it if you just enjoy your well-earned rest!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-63481794843521988382010-05-01T00:09:25.369-04:002010-05-01T00:09:25.369-04:00*Bellezza: Glad it's been a "grand experi...*Bellezza: Glad it's been a "grand experience" for you and thanks for finding time to join us after your own readalong! Will look forward to reading your post whenever you get around to it!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-39703709816615196272010-04-30T23:52:58.285-04:002010-04-30T23:52:58.285-04:00*Emily: Flabbergasted is a great word for my respo...*Emily: Flabbergasted is a great word for my response to the text (both the stories themselves and some of the things I've read about the writing process itself)! One of the ironies for me with the Bartlebooth story is that even though Perec does present the character's project as a failure--and present dozens of other stories with similar failures or "tragic endings" of one sort of another--the storytelling is so effervescent that it's easy to overlook the fact that <em>Life</em> has rather a downer ending. Should a <em>memento mori</em>, even a secular one like we have here, leave you feeling so giddy and revitalized? Glad you enjoyed the novel despite your "processing" qualms, though!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-66594607286866448742010-04-30T21:50:14.943-04:002010-04-30T21:50:14.943-04:00"most book bloggers are too lazy to consider ..."most book bloggers are too lazy to consider reading it" — Who you callin' lazy?!<br /><br />Thanks for reasearching the clinamen, and giving a name to the phenomenon. That's fantastic! (And "LU" is very funny!)Isabella Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10735198478395875257noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-44491941085666962832010-04-30T20:50:29.076-04:002010-04-30T20:50:29.076-04:00I didn't get Perec's constraints at all. (...I didn't get Perec's constraints <i>at all</i>. (Wikipedia was kind enough to give an explanation, of which I understood not a word.) It ended up impeding my enjoyment of the book because Perec was obviously doing <i>something</i> but I'm too math-dumb to figure it out. Then I hit my head on my desk so hard I died.<br /><br />I am further embarrassed to say that I did not even notice the "creative plagiarism" until I finished the book and was flipping through the material provided at the end. But T.S. Eliot did it all the time and I love Eliot. If it's for a story or poem, I say it's totally cool. When I'm reading something and all of a sudden I recognize a quote or phrase from another author's work (like Ezra Pound's "laughter out of dead bellies" in Dan Simmon's <i>Hyperion</i>) it's like I've cracked some kind of code or am a part of this elite club that gets that sort of thing. It's like the author communicating with the savvy reader in a shared language. Or is that too corny?Eileenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11058705381647529328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-58864246775517128102010-04-30T20:16:04.127-04:002010-04-30T20:16:04.127-04:00Just loved this book, but as Julia commented, I am...Just loved this book, but as Julia commented, I am done but not done. Dreaming an annotator's life I'm afraid. The librarian side of me was delighted at not only the mock lists and their gentle mockery but the exhaustive details both physical and allusionary. Both the allusions based in reality and the goofy ones he just made up. Where the real world and fictional worlds collide. And either fit together or simply offer the illusion of correct placement/interpretation. And this, and that, and then there was this... We'll never be done. And that's ok with me.Franceshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12597485569740436880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-90293895557089623352010-04-30T19:48:30.735-04:002010-04-30T19:48:30.735-04:00I'll be back; I just skimmed your post because...I'll be back; I just skimmed your post because I'm not quite finished with the novel. But, what a grand experience it's been! I'll put a post up this weekend, and revisit your blog to carefully read all the thoughts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-68706667978107232392010-04-30T17:53:36.292-04:002010-04-30T17:53:36.292-04:00Whoa, that bit with the petit-buerre is too much -...Whoa, that bit with the petit-buerre is too much - and that French table! I don't even fully grasp the extent of it, but am still flabbergasted. And it makes me wonder how Perec himself felt about this project by the time it was over - he has Bartlebooth descend into doubt and failure, after all, & the billionaire's project becomes for him a huge, burdensome apparatus that falters under the weight of its own conception. I felt like Perec ends up more stimulated under the pressure than Bartlebooth, but I still suppose he must have been glad to see the back of this thing, good grief!<br /><br />That said, I'm very glad he persevered. While I didn't find the result quite as "reader-friendly" as most of our group (more on my issues processing physical descriptions in my response to your comment over on my entry), the effort required was well rewarded. Thanks for suggesting it for our April read!Emilyhttp://www.eveningallafternoon.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-26427627186605283472010-04-30T17:14:39.049-04:002010-04-30T17:14:39.049-04:00*Julia, thanks for the kind words and for taking t...*Julia, thanks for the kind words and for taking the time to read along with us during this special read! "How can we stop now?" I'm not sure. As it dawned on me that my post was only going to touch on a fraction of the things that I really wanted to discuss in the novel, I started thinking how a group could probably spend a year posting on and discussing all Perec's labyrinths (incl. why Winckler wanted revenge). Tremendously fertile terrain! I'll look for a more user-friendly guide to that table to make the topic allusions a little more clear, but in the meantime I'm really intrigued by the parallels you draw between Perec's storytelling here and the midrash. Fascinating--thanks again for "playing" along!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-38350015115813393822010-04-30T15:47:11.127-04:002010-04-30T15:47:11.127-04:00What an adventure this has been, reading Perec, li...What an adventure this has been, reading Perec, living Perec! Thanks for your capable and thorough commentary; it makes me wonder, how can we stop now? I'm definitely going to read Life, A User's Manual again, with the French website near at hand. Although I need a little help with "le tableau des 42 contraintes" - I couldn't find a key to the locations of topics, e.g., Kafka, in the text. That drawing of the apartment building (from Saul Steinberg?), I've seen that before, somewhere. "Where a murder mystery and pi intersect," which you mention in one of your answers to a comment; I completely missed that one. Thanks for saying that Winckler's revenge was based on "unspecified reasons" - it bothered me that I hadn't picked up on his desire for revenge. And the issue of "creative plagiarism" - you're correct in saying that we all creatively plagiarize when we retell stories. Now I'm curious about the extent to which novelists do, too. In the Jewish tradition and in the Bible it's called midrash; as the traditions develop, stories are retold to new audiences and for different purposes than the original ones.<br /><br />Thank you so much, Richard, for the invitation to read Life, A User's Manual. It was wonderful fun!Juliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00305348683809503209noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-43137864313615768092010-04-30T12:18:07.137-04:002010-04-30T12:18:07.137-04:00*Jill: I think you would have loved certain aspect...*Jill: I think you would have loved certain aspects of <em>Life</em> and absolutely hated others (Perec's mania for lists, in particular). Since you like mysteries from time to time, though, maybe you should check out chapter 50 one day and get a 7-page sample of a Perec micro-mystery in the form of a short story. P.S. I added a photo of a <em>petit-beurre</em> to the post in your honor because that little girl nibbling story is just too much, I agree!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-53829792871008145362010-04-30T11:47:53.577-04:002010-04-30T11:47:53.577-04:00*Sarah: Thanks--so glad you share the enthusiasm f...*Sarah: Thanks--so glad you share the enthusiasm for Perec since I've been dying to talk about this book all week! On the "plagiarism" front, the main thing I wanted to say is that I loved how Perec rewrote the 30 writers mentioned in the postscript into his novel via the embedded quotations. Made their stories "his" in the same way that we readers make all stories "ours" through the act of reading. The borrowings also added to the puzzle effect by making me wonder which stories were entirely "original" and which were "adaptations," which on an entertainment level is entirely moot as each story needs to stand on its own anyway! That being said, it was super fun to encounter something I recognized from previous reading lives like the manipulated Borges story that appears in chapter 73. Rosendo Juárez and Don Nicolás Paredes are characters from Borges' "Hombre de la Esquina Rosada" ["Man on Pink Corner"]. Although I can't say why Perec decided to riff on that story with any certainty, of course, maybe it has something to do with the fact that Borges wrote himself into the first-person narrative as a character. It also has to do with a murder mystery based on internal clues, is extremely "visual" in its storytelling style, and uses gangster slang (unusual for Borges) that Perec mimics in his version of it. There are lots of other things about this one inconsequential example I should add, but the bottom line is that Perec's choices here get more and more astounding the more I think about them. What a guy, wow!Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01746599416342846897noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-86623157764771002952010-04-30T10:06:40.278-04:002010-04-30T10:06:40.278-04:00Reading your review, in particular, the passage ab...Reading your review, in particular, the passage about the domino effect of the storylines and clever wordplays and trompe l'oeil effects, I am both sad and glad that I didn't participate. Glad because it would really ruin all the run of the mill tripe I read. <br /><br />I absolutely love the story of the girl nibbling off the corner of the book's board map. One might wonder how many other wonderful tropes got lost in translation, so to speak.rhapsodyinbookshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07041412748239010264noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1911087927983597831.post-40357208103320369662010-04-30T08:30:21.934-04:002010-04-30T08:30:21.934-04:00Add me to the ranks of those who have a crush on t...Add me to the ranks of those who have a crush on this fabulous author! Great post Richard. Reading these posts about the book is almost as fun as reading the book was - they bring back such great memories and spark up all my excitement again. Thanks for all the research - so fascinating. I'll be back late to comment more, and do please talk more about Perec's creative plagiarism! :)Sarah (tuulenhaiven)https://www.blogger.com/profile/11007601900702081303noreply@blogger.com