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On Perec's "La vie mode d'emploi"

On Perec's "La vie mode d'emploi"

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Last week I just finished, after a quite a few months (yes, it’s hard to concentrate on books these days with all these electronic distractions), George Perec’s massive book “La vie mode d’emploi”. Perec’s book is an encyclopaedic tome that probably is the closest thing in the French language I think to a Gaddis or a Pynchon that I’ve come across, at least in terms of scope. And certainly in terms of length (more than 600 pages long). And written in a French is which is pretty damn obscure — I did have frequent recourses to asking ML “what does that word mean”?

The book describes all the inhabitants of a Parisian apartment building situated on the fictional Rue Simon-Crubeiller. And I when I say all the inhabitants, I mean all those who lived there from the building’s construction to around the mid 1970s — everyone who has lived in each apartment of each floor of the building. The book features not only an index, but also a chronological list of all the major events of the book, as well as a list of all the many stories that Perec tells us — by story, I mean here a short history or “fait divers” in most cases lasting no more than a few pages. And usually, but always, often ending badly or surprisingly.

All classes of characters swarm through the pages of Perec’s book — artists, confidence tricksters, millionaires, accountants, doctors, scholars, scientists. Perec fills his book with spurious scholarship, made-up citations from imaginary specialists of every field of human knowledge. Many characters spend their entire lives of fruitless quests that often end in failure, pursuing impossible endeavours. He includes everything. There are endless enumerations of every object found in the cellars of certain apartments. Paintings and interior decorations are described in excruciating detail. Not only the paintings themselves, but also the stories which take place inside the paintings. At one point, all the objects found in the stairway of the building over the last few decades is listed. Many of the characters know other characters in the building, but many others live separate lives. The events described in the book cover the four corners of the Earth, although we never leave rue Simon-Crubellier.

The main story running through the book is that of English billionaire Percival Bartelbooth, whose life’s work consists of a decades-long project to travel the four corners of the world (staying away from Paris for almost twenty years I think) and paint a series of watercolours in different seaside spots; back in Paris at rue Simon-Crubeiller, artisan Gaspard Winckler, on the orders of Bartelbooth, transforms each of these painting into a complicated jigsaw puzzle. For the next twenty years, Bartelbooth devotes all his energies to solving these puzzles; as each one is solved, he returns to the place where he first painted the picture and dissolves it, leaving a blank sheet of paper. Yup: I’m reminded of Beckett: everything we do in life is a means to avoid boredom.

Reading the book I couldn’t help thinking of the building I was reading it in: our building here at Avenue Rene-Coty was built at around the same time as Perec’s fictional building at 11, Rue Simon-Crubeller. Both of them are Haussmannien structures, built during the great housing boom in Paris at the end of the 19th century. Although, unlike Perec’s building, the most of the apartments in the building here have remained in the same family since its construction — talk about a particularly astute purchase, given that most of the apartments today in this seven-floor building are now worth more than 400,000 euros. I wonder what are all the stories of all the people who have lived here over the last 150 or so years?

Linking all these chaotic stories together is impossible — there is no thread running through them all. Well, that is real life, after all, where the people in the 7th floor may not necessarily know what happens on the ground floor. Links go unmade, after all. Perec does not make any attempt to step out from behind the curtain and tell us what it means. It doesn’t mean anything — we not in a novel, after all…

Jacques Yonnet and the secret course of the Bievre

Jacques Yonnet and the secret course of the Bievre

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A few weeks ago I finished Jacques Yonnet’s excellent “Rue des Maléfices”; an imperfect translation might read “Witchcraft Street”. It’s probably one of my favourite books I’ve read in French, although reading it took me a very long time at the text is very opaque. Long passages of the book’s dialogue are in 1940’s-era parisian argot. Parsing the full meaning demands repeated re-reading. Jacques Yonnet himself, circa 1935, real or disguise you decide:

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Jacques Yonnet

The arduous trek through obscure lingo is more than worth it. Yonnet’s book is essentially a series of short stories (five to ten pages in each case) linked to a particular location in Paris. Yonnet digs down through layers of history in some cases, going back to events that happened in the middle ages to explain events in contemporary paris. Other stories recount events in 1940s and 50s…. The best and most vivid chunk of the book takes place during the occupation.

The stories are wonderful. At the start of the book he explains how rue 1bis rue du Bievre, just a few steps from Notre Dame and the Seine became the tiny patch of grass that it is today, a gap in the street. There is no building there. Well: the building was cursed. He explains in terrifying realistic detail how a gypsy’s malediction led to the building’s eventual demolition, after the owner lost in quick succession his dog and his wife (the latter of which, were are told, was last seen heading in the direction of the Seine with man who was known to own a boat).

Most of the scenes in the book take place near to Rue Mouffetard, which in the book is called La Mouffe. Yonnet’s character (who is actually Yonnet? I’ve not been able to make up how much of the book is real…) spends a fair amount of at the bar “Au vieux chene” on the rue Mouffetard, where he meets all kinds of interesting people. In one scene our heroes examine in detail a map of Paris to understand why bad things happen at the particular street they happen at. The explanation is what Iain Sinclair would called a “psychogeographic” one and is intimately linked with how the streets lie in relationship to each other and the Seine.

Of course all these events happen not so far from where I live and work. In one scene very close to the book’s obscure core our hero is taken to a zone beyond his knowledge but one that I know quite well; south of boulevard Arago. After squeezing through a centimetre-wide gap between two buildings and jumping over a narrow fetid stream to reach an apartment window Mr. Yonnet’s character realises that there is still a tiny bit of the river Bievre open to the sky. This grimy stream is the Bievre, Paris’ other river, whose course today is completely beneath ground. It is actually what bisects the subterranean carrieres of the 13th and 14th arrondissements in two, and prevents any cataphiles from making an underground passage from Luxembourg to Tolbiac. And in the apartment is – well … I invite all you to read the book…

The Bievre, in the offical canon, was closed and covered at the beginning of the century. A few weekends ago, for the “Journee du Patrimoine” I visited an interesting building called “La Chateau Blanche” — this was the house of the Flemish man Jean Gobelin, who gave his name to that part of Paris. The Bievre passed nearby, in fact it was essential for a lot of the local master-crafstfmen who used its waters for processing linen for rugs and carpets.

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That street you see at the end of the photograph is actually the Boulevard Arago! I understand a bit better now why there were breweries underground the boulevard Arago at the beginning of the 20th century — such a source of fine, pure water would be ideal for making beer. Today, the Bievre ends is course in the sewers of Paris, although periodically people talk about opening it to the air again. Such schemes are invariably shelved after someone figures out the horrendous cost of purifying the water enough so that living creatures could come close to it. So it stays underground…