I've got a thing for Georges Perec. Not just because he worked as a documentalist—my own graduating class picked him as our patron—but because he proved something crucial with his Oulipo comrades: constraints don't kill creativity. They unlock it.
Every one of his books is a small masterpiece built on a specific rule. This slim volume follows a simple constraint: sit in a public place, observe, write down everything that happens. The place? Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris. The method? Three days at a café table, cataloging pedestrians, cars, buses, pigeons.
What emerges is this vaguely surreal litany—timeless yet unmistakably 1970s. A stream of lime-green Citroën 2CVs. Swallows. A mass in progress. It's like watching a Jacques Tati film on fast-forward.
The text could feel tedious at first glance. It's not. Give yourself over to the rhythm and it becomes something else entirely—a poem with a fantastical edge, pure flow. And I loved seeing the documentalist underneath it all, that impulse to classify, sort, list, categorize:
"Project for a classification of umbrellas according to their shapes, their mechanisms, their colors, their materials..."
That line alone is pure Perec. The mind that needs to order chaos into grids.
A charming literary curiosity. Highly recommend.
Christian Bourgois Editeur / Collection Titres, 2008. 49 pages.
Comments