Your skin will crawl with pleasure from reading

What sold me on Salki, by Wojciech Nowicki, was a review in the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the comparisons it draws to other writers I admire.

Nowicki travels like Svetlana Alexievich. He wants to understand the emotional history of his family, and how memories are formed. Like Georges Perec, whom he admires and cites, he accumulates impressions, images. "Another moment of beauty in Perec," he writes, "is his endless calculations, lists of objects, people, facts, and occurrences […] like smoke over a meadow."

So it's no wonder my impressions both of Alexievich and Perec hover over my reading of Salki, and I'm attuned to the similarities.

Nowicki also writes in lists. It's at times almost trance-like, a way to access memory, whereas with Perec, perhaps it's a way to order the chaotic external world.

But it's striking also to see this edition of Salki side by side with Perec's classic, Life: A User's Manual, how they both show cross-sections of a living space — the intersection of individual lives and the attics of the mind. The archeological, and psychological, layers of identity.

The cover of the original Polish edition features an elephant on the roof of a nondescript building. I was so struck by the review I linked to above, that not only did I promptly order myself a copy, I convinced my sister to attend in my stead a reading and discussion with the author, Wojciech Nowicki, and the translator, Jan Pytalski (there was an event near her, but not one in my town). There was some discussion of the different tone in covers for the different language editions, but both are appropriate to the content; ultimately, cover art is a marketing decision.

One other element on the English cover: the endorsement from Andrzej Stasiuk. "Your skin will crawl with pleasure from reading." Which is just a little bit weird and sets me a-tingle.

This book is not fiction. These are essays and anecdotes. Salki is a memoir, a travelogue, an inquiry, a meditation. I am reading it slowly, for that skin-crawling pleasure.

Excerpt.

Palindrome

Helena came home from school one day recently all excited to tell me about palindromes. There'd been a substitute teacher that day, and the regular teacher hadn't provided a lesson plan. So, palindromes!

And though I know a bit about palindromes, and I know some palindromes, I don't think it had ever occurred to me that there might be palindromes in languages other than English. Thus, my first French palindrome: élu par cette crapule. (For a palindrome to work in French, diacritics are often disregarded.)

And it seems obvious to me now that this is exactly the sort of jeu de mots that Georges Perec might have played with. In fact, he composed a palindrome (in the form of a story or poem, kind of) that is 1247 words long.

Coincidentally, later the same evening that Helena and I were getting word nerdy, I was reading my book (which was rather big on coincidence) and it happened that the point was made that a character's cellphone ringtone was a palindrome — Bach's Crab Canon.




See also how Vi Hart folds space-time with Bach and plays a music-box Möbius strip.

Matrix literature

My copy of The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise, by Georges Perec, finally arrived! This slim little volume is exquisite!

The title has been pared down a little from the original (l'art et la maniѐre d'aborder son chef de service pour lui demander une augmentation): the art and craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise.

(Some of the background I set forth here is covered in greater detail by translator David Bellos in his introduction to the book.)

In 1968, a computer company set the challenge for writers to use a computer's basic mode of operation as a writing device. The outline: a flow-chart, a simple algorithm, a decision matrix.

The flow-chart is reproduced on this volume's endpapers.

By its nature, the algorithm is well-suited to being experienced electronically.

Of course, it has Oulipoian roots, as an exploration of how mathematics can be used to generate literature. In fact, I'm sure we're all quite familiar with another, very popular style of "matrix literature," an experiment in which (A Story As You Like It), by Raymond Queneau, is available online. (Hypertext literature has come a long way since the 1960s. I'm currently working through one such "traditional print" example with Helena.)

Perec reused the material from the art and craft in chapter 98 (Réol) of Life A User's Manual, which upon the learning of said fact I immediately reread.

I don't recall it having such a potent effect on me the first go around, but this time it brought tears to my eyes. Remember the Réols? — the young couple with the extravagant, expensive bed purchased on credit. And it puts me in mind of, no doubt because I've been reading so many articles related to the release of The Pale King, David Foster Wallace and his maximalist approach to literature (did he ever read Perec's Life, I wonder), in which he does not excise the excruciating minutiae of our lives and minds. I see now that Perec does something similar in Life. The chapter concerning Réol — and it can be read as a wholly self-contained narrative — tells a story through a perspective entirely restricted to the management of Réol's finances. There's the logistical problem of fixing an appointment with his boss (which day of the week his boss is likely to be in a good mood, not distracted, and so on), but mostly it's utilities payments due, rent in arrears, groceries on credit, loans, percentages, meeting the requirements for the assistance plan, etc. There is nothing about the Réols' life — no chance encounters or romantic situations, no grand parties or disastrous meals, no anecdotes about their son. And yet, financial management is life, one version of their life, and it's a full story. With a beautifully poignant (and happy) ending.

The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise is told in the second person. Story is secondary to the experiment.

either he thinks your idea is positive rich in possibilities worthwhile or he thinks it is stupid and will let you know in no uncertain terms that your logic is addled that's to say cock-eyed that's to say so devoid of understanding as to be close to either early-onset alzheimer's or congenital idiocy remember however that whether or not he calls you a nincompoop dimwit cretin nutcase crackpot woodenhead bananabrain dolt idiot or fool it comes to the same thing namely your plan will land in the wpb and you will return empty-handed to your desk while awaiting happier days it goes without saying that learning from experience you will improve your basic idea so when the day comes once again to talk with whole and open heart to your head of department he will be unable to dismiss you straight off as a nitwit so you allow yourself some months because one must always try to stack the odds in one's favour you swot up on the issue then when your plan seems perfect you go back to see mr x let's assume he's in

The text is, as is to expected given the structural constraint, repetitive and recursive, and the real-time computer-logic mood is enhanced by the lack of punctuation. (Also, it's set entirely in lowercase, but thankfully, and surprisingly, not in courier.)

I found it easiest to follow by reading it out loud. (In fact, I readily imagine the whole text being narrated and scored by Philip Glass à la Einstein on the Beach. Hey, Phil, give me a call, let's talk Perec!)

But there is a story! It's a little bit tragic even, but told with a light touch and great deal of humour.

The iterations come to be modified, and it's these variations in the phrasing that make for the funniest moments, unexpected as they are. Either they change as you reconsider them in light of all that has already occurred (the computer algorithm weights the possible outcomes and their likelihood of occurring as it acquires and learns to process the qualitative input from inside your head), or they change over time (the computer adds to the equation the actual fact of certain outcomes already having occurred).

It could be that all these thoughts pass through your neurotic head over a span of mere seconds when first you consider the possibility of asking for a raise. Or, this is a distillation of your entire career.

Either the employee is paralyzed by overthinking the situation and "we shall suppose to keep things simple — for we must do our best to keep things simple" never approaches the boss to ask for a raise; or the employees does in fact take action as governed by the logic of the algorithm, in which case years pass and the employee approaches retirement, without ever having asked for a raise. (The story does cover an approach and a request and a raise, but let's not complicate the point.)

I recommend The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise to those readers interested in experimental literature, but I suspect most readers will not find enough narrative thread to hold their attention for long. (On the other hand, it's short, and as an introduction to how a nontraditional approach to narrative can produce story it might serve you well alongside something like Calvino's t-zero stories, with which I see some similiarities in terms of the breakdown of processes into its smallest constituents, in a Zeno's paradox kind of way.)

If you have not read Perec's Life A User's Manual, I encourage you to read along at Conversational Reading.

Tomorrow marks what would've been Perec's 75th birthday.

To do
Approach the head of my department to submit a request for the transitioning of my role, and title, into Editor of Matrix-generated Literature and for the use of our proprietary decision support system to generate a novel in which the possible decision outcomes are not binary, but multiple and weighted and combined, where one can respond both a and b, or all of the above, to allow for the overlaying of choices and the "automatic" snipping and juxtaposition of appropriate segments of text, to tell a story about, say, a family's quest to acquire the perfect sofa, and while the daughter's preferences are considered they are of a different value than those of her parents, and the cat is also given due thought, all of which necessitates a careful study of how the sofa is used (playing video games, reading, napping, etc — each activity commanding different optimal bodily postures), how many people use the sofa over a given period of time to engage in those activities, and how many are likely to want to do so at the same time, budget of course being a key factor, but also available room, with an eye for spatial configuration of the entire room and allowing for the possibility of auxiliary seating (also to be determined through a similar decision matrix), no, no, it had better be more work-related, say, the design by committee and subsequent implementation of said design of the employee kitchen space, its general arrangement and furnishings, something like that.

All in a week's work

Shop talk
I know the readership here to be smart and varied, so on the off chance some of you may actually be interested in this sort of thing, I'll mention this really interesting blog post the company I work for is promoting.

"This sort of thing" is business software, and the article addresses why so many enterprise resource planning systems fail; the researcher posits that it may be related to the professional allegiances and practices of the employees who use those systems.

If you have ever experienced (or indeed, been the victim of) the disruption of a company-wide implementation of the sort of system that's supposed to make you more productive, I encourage you also to participate in the survey that's discussed in the article.

Cat chat
I'm not a fan of Justin Bieber, but my daughter is, and I've come to terms with this — she will develop her own tastes; hopefully she will grow out of it (and someday soon!).

Now Justin Bieber reads The Cat in the Hat (via Dewey Divas). But not very well. He sounds dumb and bored.

While I can appreciate the attempt to promote literacy, or reading as cool, or the glory of pizza, I think this may backfire. This puzzling PR attempt brings him down another notch in my estimation. If the point is to sound like a (below?) average student being forced to read a text, well,... Is the point for millions of young girls to realize they read better than him? To realize that reading, for some people, is really pretty lame after all? He certainly doesn't bring a performer's verve to his reading. Does he even know what this story is about?

(Note: I couldn't actually watch it to the end. Maybe I'm missing Justin's spectacular finale?)

Life redux
For those who missed out on last year's group read of Life A User's Manual, by Georges Perec, and those of you eager to relive Life, a read-along is being hosted at Conversational Reading, starting mid-March and throughout April.

I'll follow the discussion, and as much as I still think about what an awesome wiki project it would be to annotate Life (and I do hope to dostart it someday), I expect I'll be occupied at about that time reading a Perec work never before translated, the soon-to-be-released The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise.

Octobre reading

(Or, French books by guys mostly named Georges.)

Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
A readalong brought to you by Frances (Nonsuch Book), with posting on Parts 1, 2, and 3 on October 14, 21, and 28.

The delectable new translation by Lydia Davis everyone's talking about makes it hard to resist. I first read Madame Bovary some 20+ years ago. I didn't care much for it. I'm counting on my being a much wiser woman now to get something more out of it. (I'll be travelling this weekend and leaving the hardcover behind, but I have the original French loaded up on my ereader, in case I'm feeling ambitiously French.)

A Void, Georges Perec
Richard (Caravan de recuerdos) hosts this shared read, discussions taking place between October 29 and November 7.

I've read this one previously as well, back when it was first made available in English, at a time when I was fascinated with things Oulipo and also toying with the idea of pursuing further studies, and some kind of career, in problems with translation (which I never did). The book's conceit is that it is written without the letter "e," the most frequently occurring letter in French and also English). Now how do you translate that? (The Spanish translation has no "a.") I read it then as a puzzle; I'll read it now with, hopefully, appreciation for plot and character, which I've since learned that Perec can in fact do rather well.

Monsieur Monde Vanishes, Georges Simenon
I've been saving this. Having loved Simenon's Strangers in the House recently, I thought another roman dur would be perfect for my coming weekend getaway. The kid and I are flying to DC to visit with my sister for a Canadian Thanksgiving away. Even though it's a short flight, I've given excessively careful consideration to which book it is I want to have on hand when we're told to turn off all electronic devices. This is it.

(For Helena I picked out something called Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute, cuz, well, cyborgs! and lunch! Note: this book is not French. It's by a guy called Jarret J Krosoczka.)

So. Monsieur Monde walks out on his life, according to the back cover, and apart from the fact that I have a fascination with people who do this (I mean, real people actually do this!; it's not just in stories, you know, where he says he's going out to get a pack of smokes and that's the last you hear of him!), the why and how of their doing it, I've spent every day of October, and most of September, thinking about running away (mostly because of my stupid job). Plus it's cold and raining a lot, so it feels right.

Yet another couple of French books
I finished The Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille, and I'm within a few pages of the end of Roberte Ce Soir and The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, by Pierre Klossowski (acquired during a thankfully short-lived phase of exploring obscure writers whose surnames begin with the letter "k," in some misguided desire to one day be considered one of them).

I can't say I actually recommend either of them — they're not exactly entertaining in any conventional sense. But. The Story of the Eye is an interesting complement to Tom McCarthy's C, the whole sex-death-grieving-dissociation thing. And there's a lot to dissect in Klossowki with regard to sex and gender politics; it's quite philosophical and written in a somewhat dry and academic, but playful, tone, and it could be worth careful study if you have the time or inclination, of which for the time being I have neither.

La Vie est belle

Non frustra vixi.

Life A User's Manual (Georges Perec) is so, so much the book I wish I would write.

I love how difficult it was to find the space to read the final 30 pages this weekend, between kicking the ball around the schoolyard, buying fresh-cut tulips, getting caught in the rain, waiting for news of the hospitalized 90-year-old grandfather-in-law, walking some more for the hell of it with nowhere to go, laundering, cooking some surprisingly delicious lemon-dill chicken, playing a videogame, planting up some pots on the balcony, going for ice cream, and drinking chardonnay; reading fills some odd spaces.

I love how summer is so quickly upon us and how our courtyard is brimming with fresh but familiar noises: the couple with the new, strangely quiet baby; the couple who have been using their air conditioner all week long, even the day it snowed; the girl hoisting her bicycle up the fire escape to the third floor; the pigeons roosting; the man smoking on his balcony describing what it's like to watch the hockey game with his father, who's visiting from France and has never seen a game in his life, and the Habs won; the woman shaking out a tablecloth; the couple having a romantic candlelight dinner on their balcony; the drunkards spilling out from the bar on the corner; the trio for flute, violin, and cello; the couple who never speak to each other except to give each other orders, which they duly follow.

And for me, this book is now very much connected with this sense of interconnectedness, this melding of all our lives, and there's joy in it.

I love how it makes me miss my cat, the one I named Calvino. I see his younger self on Perec's shoulder, and his namesake is frequently mentioned alongside Perec in various commentaries.

I love the sense of eternal return. Everything is undone: the puzzles, but also indexing systems, construction plans, careers, families, kitchens, and good deeds (for example, the tale of the green beans). Apartments filled and emptied. All the stuff that comes and goes. Really, a beautiful, life-affirming thing. Out of chaos, order, and back again.

(Was Valène's painting undone? Or was it stalled in a state of potential?)

I love the allusions to the game of go. On the third-floor landing are seven marble lozenges laid out in the ko position (page 530), a kind of infinite deadlock. It's a game of territory, defined by what surrounds it. Positions are best shown in relief. Kind of like jigsaw puzzle pieces.

(The Gold Bug Variations: she watches the two men puzzle together at the cabin, one of them searching the board to find a fit for the piece in his hand, the other searching the table to find the piece that fits a chosen spot. Which puzzler are you?)

My favourite story within this novel is the tale of the woman who made the devil appear eighty-two times (chapter 65). Because it features the devil, but also because of the sleight of hand involved, within the story itself as well as for its place within the novel. These characters are conspicuously absent from the map of the building (previous residents of Madame Moreau's apartment). This is also the chapter ending with the tin with the picture of the girl eating the petit-beurre (as she eats a "missing" chapter for the skipped chess move, disappearing one of the building's cellars ).

Frankly, the whole book puts me in mind of the vanishing leprauchaun problem: where's the missing chapter? the missing puzzle piece? how did the puzzle piece change shape?

Annotation
I'm itching to annotate this book, but it's a daunting task. (I'll be considering this in the coming weeks; let's see how the book sits with me over more time. I'm toying with the idea of picking up a copy in French; my French is pretty crap, but maybe I'll learn something along the way.)

If you look hard enough, you'll find other people have done some of the legwork. . .

Compare Life A User's Manual (p 423):

. . . and Moriane with its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass, like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath medusa-shaped chandeliers.

with Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities:

When you have forded the river, when you have crossed the mountain pass, you suddenly find before you the city of Moriana, its alabaster gates transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales swim beneath the medusa-shaped chandeliers.

(Which passage actually jumped out at me in all its exquisite beautifulness.)

As for the amazing couple Cyrille Altamont meets in a pub (page 504), the "thirty-year-old woman with a look that was both Slav and Asiatic at the same time — broad cheekbones, narrow eyes, reddish fair hair plaited and wound around her head" — this is clearly Clawdia Chauchat, and the gentleman is Mynheer Peeperkorn (although I've not yet met him for myself), known to me from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain (which book I left off at page 425, so I cannot tell if any passage in particular is being more closely referenced).

Recommendation
If you enjoyed reading Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, I vehemently urge you to check out The Dodecahedron: Or A Frame for Frames, by Paul Glennon. I recently listed it as a book I feel deserves a wider audience, and previously excerpted a bit here.

Life: an index of sorts

I am currently unavailable as I am finishing reading Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual.

Caravana de recuerdos (Richard)

• April Shared Read: Life A User's Manual
• Perec, 1
• Queneau, 1
• On E.R.'s Blog, 1
• On E.R.'s Blog, 2
• Life A User's Manual

Conversational Reading (Scott Esposito)

• Life: A User's Manual, 1
• Life A User's Manual, 2

Dolce Bellezza (Bellezza)

• Initial Thoughts on Perec: Life, A User’s Manual
• Life A User's Manual by Georges Perec

Evening All Afternoon (Emily)

• Life A User's Manual

kiss a cloud (Claire)

• On why I am loving Life A User's Manual
• Life A User's Manual

Magnificent Octopus (Isabella)

• Music to read Perec by
• Things that are driving me crazy in the user's manual for life
• An acute and strange kind of staring
• Life: an index of sorts
• La Vie est belle

Nonsuch Book (Frances)

• life a user's manual by georges perec: initial thoughts
• a few last thoughts on life a user's manual

 A Number of Things (Julia)

• Life: A User's Manual, by Georges Perec
• Perec, and a New Chronology
• Perec and His Lists
• The Dictionary Gamester's Tale

This Book and I Could Be Friends (EL Fay)

• Stuff

what we have here is a failure to communicate (Sarah)

• Life A User's Manual

An acute and strange kind of staring

Daddi, after he'd got back from his holiday in the country, had appeared to all of them like someone completely dazed. It was as if he were somehow outside himself. He'd look at you with an empty smile on his lips, his eyes dull and glazed. He wasn't really looking at you, as was obvious when anyone called him. Then that astounded look had disappeared and been transformed into an acute and strange kind of staring. First of all, he'd stared at things from a distance, obliquely. Then, gradually, as if attracted by certain signs which he thought he could observe in one or other of his most intimate friends — especially in those who most assiduously frequented his house — highly natural signs, for everyone was thrown into a state of utter consternation by that sudden and extraordinary change. It was so completely in contrast with the usual serenity of his character. Gradually, he'd come to watch them attentively from close to, and in the last days he'd become downright unbearable. He'd suddenly plonk himself in front of now one, now another of them, place his hands on the man's shoulders, look into his eyes — deep, deep down into them he'd look.

— from "In the Abyss," by Luigi Pirandello, in Short Stories.

Thank goodness Life A User's Manual is indexed! Daddi is mentioned only 3 times. Indeed, the fifty-first chapter (page 163) lists "124 The single mother reading Pirandello's story of Daddi, Romeo" — which synopsis is fleshed out (a tiny bit) on page 19: the Pirandello story "telling the tale of how Romeo Daddi went mad" is noted as being included in the revue carried toward the bathroom by the girl in the Foulerot apartment.

I'm sure it's no more meaningful than any other allusion Perec makes, but it sang to me: Romeo Daddi! What a name! And he went mad! And so I had to find out more.

Now, I just happen to have a collection of Pirandello's short stories on my shelf, so when Perec referenced this story, I was quick to pull down the volume and check it for clues, as if this were another piece of the puzzle.

Later (page 215) we learn that Geneviève Foulerot is perhaps (Why perhaps? She was selected. Has she not made up her mind about it yet?) to star in a TV adapatation of the story, as "Gabriella Vanzi, the woman whose glance, direct and depraved at the same time, drove Romeo Daddi mad."

But that's not quite how the story goes. It's not so simple.

Daddi's friends have a theory (but they don't know about any woman):

Because you and I alike still have that little machine known as civilization in good working order inside us; so we let the whole bang shoot of all our actions, all our thoughts, all our feelings sit there, hidden, at the bottom of our consciousnes. But, now suppose that someone, whose little civilization machine's broken down, comes along and looks at you as I looked at you just now, no longer as a joke, but in all seriousness, and without expecting it removes from the bottom of your consciousness all that assembly of thoughts, actions, and feelings which you've got inside you. . . .

Gabriella Vanzi is a friend of Daddi's wife, and she says herself she went a little bit mad the day it happened, and she alone did not drive him mad (I can't believe her "civilization machine" is impaired), but it is the circumstance of them together that unleashed some force, but even that is not the madness, or the source of the madness.

In fact, it has a lot to do with consequences of the kind of zipless fuck that Jong's Isadora so hungered for. It's a kind of a breakdown in our social contract and, more importantly, an assault on the bonds of love. The madness comes from the realization of the meaninglessness of people's actions, despair in the awareness of our capacity for remorselessness regarding our actions. And maybe Gabriella is evil, maybe she really is to blame.

Things that are driving me crazy in the user's manual for life

Users' manuals are hard to write. (I know — I've edited translations of some.) Their point is to clearly and simply describe (not necessarily explain) an often complicated and technical process. The more complex the process, the bigger the challenge to present the material unambiguously.

It's not unusual in, say, telephony manuals, to stumble across apparently contradictory instructions or passages of unclear agency.

So it comes as no surprise that in a manual concerning itself with the process of life as it coalesces at 11 rue Simon-Crubellier there should be a few trouble spots.

I'm a little over halfway through Georges Perec's Life A User's Manual, and I've identified 4 things that are driving me crazy.

1. The preamble is repeated in chapter 44. It would be reasonable to assume that these paragraphs were singled out after the fact (Or perhaps they were written first. The passage does after all fairly succinctly pin down the point of the whole book.). The only difference between these passages is that the preamble gives one more diagrammatic example in each of the categories of jigsaw puzzle pieces, and the diagrams are very slightly different. Why, why are these different? If the preamble and chapter 44 are the same, why not let them be the same?

2. I'm a bit put out by the lack of symmetry. The fifty-first chapter is special. Note that it is not "chapter fifty-one," in keeping with how the other chapters are labeled; it's "the fifty-first chapter." It is the kernel. Perec has painted himself into Valènes's room; the self-referential painting itemizes the book's contents. The rest of the novel serves only to flesh out what's listed here. However, it is not the precise physical center of the book (unless it is so by page count? but I can't imagine this holding across translations). In a book of 99 chapters, chapter 50 is the middle one. If we include the missing chapter for the ghost cellar (see below), chapter 51 still would not be the centre, but merely would begin the second half. (Why am I so stuck on this chapter, that it necessarily should be physically, structurally central as well as meaningfully?)

3. Perec's knight's tour — the route by which he leads us through the apartment block — is faulty. Was it a mistake he noticed too far along in the process which he never bothered to rectify? I can't believe it went unnoticed! Was it deliberate? It must be deliberate, but why? What happens between chapters 65 and 66? What makes their relationship unique in this building? (I'm not quite there yet. Hopefully I'll be reading these tonight.) Why does Perec skip over the bottom left cellar, which would've satisfied the knightly condition?

4. All the hexagons! What's with all the hexagons?! There are hexagonal red tiles (page 20); a low table, made of a pane of smoked glass set on a polyhedron of hexagonal cross-section (28); hexagonal vignettes (94); glazed red hexagonal tiles (120); glazed ochre-yellow hexagonal tiles (152); a hexagonal fireplace (191); small brownish hexagonal tiles (191); a hexagonal quartz brooch (219). Hmm, perhaps there aren't as many hexagons as I'd thought. (Maybe I missed some? Why'd I think there were so many?) Actually, there's a lot of geometry: circles, trapezoids, spheres, diamonds, squares, cubes, pyramids, rectangles, lozenges, cylinders, octagons, chevrons, kidney shapes. (And colours!) But for some reason the hexagons stand out for me. Perhaps emphasized by the bees, beeswax, honeycomb. Perhaps I've lived in too many apartments with hexagon-tiled bathrooms.

The precision of detail (falsely?) leads one to believe there is significance in it.

(Borges's "Library of Babel" consists of an endless expanse of interlocking hexagonal rooms. The "Crimson Hexagon" contains a perfect catalog of the libray. The fifty-first chapter is Life's crimson hexagon.)

Music to read Perec by

I was relieved to find that Life A User's Manual is about 100 pages shorter than I thought, if you think it's OK, and I do, to subtract all the varied backmatter: index, chronology, checklist, translator's notes. Also, I found a very useful map on page 569, which, while included in the table of contents, could've been more clearly labelled, like, as a map.

I was early trepidatious of reading reviews or explanations or theories, of encountering spoilers. But quite by accident in an early Saturday morning pre-coffee haze I became better acquainted with my paperback, and I'm glad I did. Nothing to be afraid of! And a map! From chapter 3 I'd been toying with the urge to map out the apartment block for myself, but now I wouldn't have to. I've looked deep inside myself and can admit that I could never hope to decipher all of Perec's tricks, that figuring it all out for myself is unrealistic, and there's only a richer experience to be gained by being open to background information from varied sources. So, bring it on!

Now, I'm struggling with background music. Some books scream out for a soundtrack. I think this is one of them.

This is tough. French. Experimental. I thought Satie. But it's a little early, and not all that adventurous. But nothing too dada, too obvious. I thought 60s-70s, and so yé-yé, like Serge Gainsbourg, but maybe that's a little too pop and also a little too sexy, but then, I haven't read the book yet, so how can I know?

The experiment with form begs for jazz, but by 1975 jazz is a little vast — where to start?

The puzzle of it, its mathematics, suggest Philip Glass.

I find that Perec worked at one point with musician Philippe Drogoz. I can't find much information about Philippe Drogoz, and my sight-reading is a little weak to get a feel for the scores available online. I find a reference to a piece of his being based on Beethoven's Violin concerto, op. 61. So that's what I listened to for a while. Classical, and classic.

Then I remembered. Madame de Beaumont's concert grand has something on the stand (page 7). "Gertrude of Wyoming" by Arthur Stanley Jefferson. Well, it turns out this isn't easily listenable. Arthur Stanley Jefferson was the real name of Stan Laurel — funny guy, but not exactly a song writer. "Gertrude of Wyoming" does exist as an epic poem by Thomas Campbell, about the massacre in 1778 of American revolutionaries at the hands of Loyalists and Iroquois. But to my knowledge (and Google's), it was never set to music.

In a still life (page 15) is The Unfinished Symphony: A Novel, of which the author cannot be deciphered. That's not much to go on. The world has seen countless unfinished symphonies...

Vera Orlova makes her appearance with Schoenberg and Sprechgesang.
Lieder by Schumann and Hugo Wolf. Songs by Mussorgsky (which sound dark and melodramatic). I'm sampling all of these.

She sang the role of Angelica in Arconati's Orlando, with the famous last line: "Innamorata, mio cuore tremante voglio morire." There are some operas telling the stroy of Orlando (notably by Handel and Vivaldi), but Julio Arconati (1828-1905) appears to be a fictional invention inspired from Jules Vernes' Le Château des Carpathes. The imaginary opera is clearly based on the poem "Orlando Furioso" by Ludovico Ariosto, which was never set to music outside of these fictions.

Perec is creating an imaginary aural sculpture.

There used to be an opera singer in #3. When the building's first occupants moved in, us among them, she sent everyone a notice that she rehearsed regularly between 1 and 3 in the afternoon, apologizing in advance for any disruption it might cause and willing to accommodate anyone who might feel put out. I worked from home in those days; I know she toured often, but not once did I hear her; #3 spanned the front of the building, and my workspace was in the back. I sometimes felt sorry for this, for the fact that I never passed her on the stairs, that, since we live in #1, just inside the building's entrance, I never had opportunity to walk past her door and possibly overhear the strains of heaven.

What music do you recommend for reading Perec?

This, that, the other thing

I was all excited about returning to the arms of Thomas Mann after having set aside The Magic Mountain back in January, and I had a wonderful few days with him, and I made it past the midway point. But now I'm distracted again.

Boy! was I glad to be working from home today as Life A User's Manual, by Georges Perec, was delivered to my door. I hadn't intended to commit to any kind of readalong so soon (after last year's glut — Infinite Jest and 2666), but finally I couldn't resist the prospect of sharing in this book with a number of fine people (Claire, Emily, Frances, Richard, and Sarah), and in particular these impressions made an impression on me. I'm a little daunted, though, now that I see how big it is.

Also arrived in today's post: Thomas Mann's The Holy Sinner, which I'd never heard of before its inclusion on the WSJ's list of novels of ideas. I love medieval incestuous monks! So much to look forward to!

I recently zipped through Robert J Sawyer's Wake, the second in his WWW series. I really can't stand this guy. I love his books though (and love to hate parts of them too). But then there are bits of the Author that seep into the text — the geek who tries too hard to impress girls, to prove he's an enlightened, sensitive male; the guy who blows his own horn just a little too loudly or in the wrong places. One of his characters was noted to have been watching Flashforward the other night fer chrissake (Robert J Sawyer wrote the novel (which I thoroughly enjoyed) on which the TV show is based, and is a consultant to the program). And there's something about him writing about a 16-year-old girl's sexual awakening which is downright creepy. I can't put my finger on it.

Yet, for all their flaws, I can't put down his books (usually — I never made it through Hominids, let alone the rest of the trilogy). I mean, sure I insult them, but I gobble them up. The man has great ideas. But the writing... Oh, it could just be so much better. Dialogue is stilted, though Sawyer's made tremendous improvement over the last decade. There are some weird, misplaced (in my view) cultural references: Do kids today even listen to Robert Palmer? Sure it's in the context of the 16-year-old's dad, but it seems awfully indulgent to give this minor character a whole parody. As for the intended audience, while this ref would work for geeky oldtimers, for most of the rest of the book they would probably feel very much talked down to. It's preachy about things barely relevant (mmm, no, not at all relevant) to the story (for example, gay marriage). And some relatively simple concepts (whether in AI, game theory, or ethics) felt over-explained.

I have to say: it's one of the nicest ARCs I've ever received (won in a contest) — the glossy cover, the binding, the paper quality. And, I can't wait to read the next book in the series. Be advised, they don't really work as standalone novels. I highly recommend this series as "starter sci-fi" for teenagers. Grown-ups would do better with The Terminal Experiment — the first Sawyer I ever read, as a direct result of hearing him (he can't have been that annoying) in interview with Peter Gzowski, and one of my favourites. If you really want to know more about Sawyer, you can check the entry in Wikipedia, which I'm sure he's edited extensively.

Phew. I feel better now.

I'm off to read Perec, tout de suite. It's a self-help book, right?