Björn recenserade Je me souviens av Georges Perec
None
4 stjärnor
I remember
and let me just stop myself right there. It's much too easy to write gag reviews of Perec, to adopt the trick of any particular book and write the review the same way; review A Void without using the letter E, etc. It's precious and clever and just don't. Because Perec is so much more than just a clown and he deserves more respect than that.
I Remember, then, is a series of memories, written exactly like that:
I remember Xavier Cugat.
I remember the 121.
I remember only two or three of the seven dwarves; Grumpy, Dopey, Doc.
...and so on and so on, 479 of them, summing up Perec's life from age 10 to roughly age 25 (though some memories, like the Baader Meinhof gang or Sharon Tate, were obviously more recent when he wrote them down in the mid-70s). Each memory is presented as …
I remember
and let me just stop myself right there. It's much too easy to write gag reviews of Perec, to adopt the trick of any particular book and write the review the same way; review A Void without using the letter E, etc. It's precious and clever and just don't. Because Perec is so much more than just a clown and he deserves more respect than that.
I Remember, then, is a series of memories, written exactly like that:
I remember Xavier Cugat.
I remember the 121.
I remember only two or three of the seven dwarves; Grumpy, Dopey, Doc.
...and so on and so on, 479 of them, summing up Perec's life from age 10 to roughly age 25 (though some memories, like the Baader Meinhof gang or Sharon Tate, were obviously more recent when he wrote them down in the mid-70s). Each memory is presented as just a flash, a simple, clear statement, huge events like the liberation of France or insignificant details like the name of a kind of candy get equal treatment. Some are completely mysterious 60 years later, at least without googling them. Some are memories of things he doesn't remember. Some are objectively wrong. Some... or rather many, to the surprise of no one who's read Perec, are puns of varying degrees of obscenity, or mnemonic devices. Some are unanswered questions.
As often with Perec, the simple act of putting all of these together is part of what makes it any more than just a collection of nonsense sentences. Those two words at the beginning of each sentence, "I remember", tells us: there's a story behind all of these. They all shape a person. They all clutter everyone's subconscious. 479 hooks baited with nothing more than our curiousity to want to know more, and having to substitute our own memories for his unspoken ones.