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La Boutique Obscure

124 Dreams

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
The beguiling, never-before-translated dream diary of Georges Perec
In La Boutique Obscure Perec once again revolutionized literary form, creating the world's first "nocturnal autobiography." From 1968 until 1972—the period when he wrote his most well-known works—the beloved French stylist recorded his dreams. But as you might expect, his approach was far from orthodox.
Avoiding the hazy psychoanalysis of most dream journals, he challenged himself to translate his visions and subconscious churnings directly into prose. In laying down the nonsensical leaps of the imagination, he finds new ways to express the texture and ambiguity of dreams—those qualities that prove so elusive.
Beyond capturing a universal experience for the first time and being a fine document of literary invention, La Boutique Obscure contains the seeds of some of Perec's most famous books. It is also an intimate portrait of one of the great innovators of modern literature.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from February 25, 2013
      Between 1968 and 1972 Oulipian master Perec (1936-1982) recorded and reworked what is ostensibly a dream journal, now translated into English for the first time. Chronicling apparent fears and obsessions, Perec (Life A User's Manual) is concerned with his height, oppressive police, concentration camps, drugstores, and potentially Oedipal relationships. He worries about the premise of his novel A Void, and returns again and again to the woman Z, who shows up replacing Z's with S's in a bookstore. She eventually abandons him, becoming a "scar" he must live with. Perec's work is surreal, but only just; a narrative of a broken relationship emerges across the four years of dreams. It is the story of a mind coming to terms with a Europe locked in the Cold War's paranoid haze: familiar places no longer seem the same; people act oddly; the world as experienced is strange. These may have been real dreams, but they feel like more, as dreams often do. And "because the labyrinth leads nowhere but out of itself," the book ends with the "real memory" of Perec as a child bouncing a ball against a convent wall. This is the reader's reward: watching Perec's mind weaving metaphor and story even while asleep.

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  • OverDrive Read
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Languages

  • English

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