Life A User's Manual [Paperback]

Similarities between this book and the Goldberg Variations are, of course, not so striking at all, when keeping in mind that Perec' masterpiece is dedicated to Oulipo's founding father Raymond Queneau. After being deeply moved by a performance of Bach's Art of the Fugue, Queneau came up with a new approach to literature with a strong emphasis on structure and the "language material". While Queneau's own "Style Exercises" may be the best known Oulipo work, Perec' Users Manual, digs infinitely deeper.

Like all masterworks, the basic idea of the User's Manual is simple. Divide an imaginary apartment building into a two-dimensional 10x10 grid. Use a chess' knight's jump to move from space to space without visiting one spot twice and use a variety of other rules governing the various elements within the rooms and let the imagination run "wild".
Perec' uses the jigsaw puzzle as leitmotiv of this book. In a beautiful introduction, that contains one of the clearest and most insightful texts on gestalt, we the readers get the instruction to regard each of the 100 chapters as parts of a puzzle that only gain true meaning after full assembly. Next we crisscross the building, get detailed descriptions of each of the room's interiors and the history of current and/or former occupants. While the knight's jump approach necessarily leads to fractionation of the individual story lines - many of the inhabitants occupy more than a single space- Perec has gone out his way to keep the readers on track by providing various indices and tables of content.

Using a variety of genres that were exemplified by writers varying from Poe to Proust, from Borges to Joyce, from Verne to Foucault, Perec furnishes the individual novels that constitute this book. Central is the story of the eccentric millionaire Bartlebooth and his quest to fill his life with the production of 750 750-piece jig saw aquarelles of port cities, the solving of the puzzles and their final resolution. Interspersed are the other novels that range from comedy to mystery. Yet, where the genius comes in is in the way both the structure and the contents come together in formulating Perec' own philosophy of life. Books are always ranked on the quality of their first line, yet this one scores high on my list of best final chapters. Indeed one of the great books of the 20th century.

Based on the author's high and my increasingly limited command of the French language, I decided to read the original French version supplemented by Bellos' translation. This translation is very precise and provides the English reader with an exact transcript. Yet, the original text is definitely richer. To me the original is far more musical and whimsical and lacks Bellos' more clinical approach. The title gives a good example. User's Manual is indeed a correct translation of Mode d'Emploi. Yet, it lacks the secondary (?) meaning o "life, a way to use it". Strikingly, the head to head comparison revealed the glaring omission of a whole paragraph of the final chapter in the translation. Let's hope that this error can be fixed in future editions.

Perec's genius - and, contrary to what one reviewer has written, it's precisely his very human, and very warm and tender understanding of humanity that generates this - is his keen insight that everything contains a story, be it the postcard on the desk, or a particular painting on a wall, or a puzzle piece that just doesn't fit. Perec takes an apartment building and jumps from room to room, grabbing at these bits of minutae, following their backstories, and creating one of the most complex and beautiful mosaics of life that's ever been put into words. As each room yields its secrets, we see that a tiny apartment building in Paris really does contain the whole world - a huge swath of history, languages, peoples, and cultures; comedy, tragedy, mystery, and drama; personal and public; fiction and nonfiction; poetry, prose, lists, games, recipes, articles, signs, crossword puzzles...

Flip to the back and check out the index - it's intimidating, and yet - it's all there, in one building, waiting to be discovered and explored.

I can't comment on the translation, unfortunately - I've only read it in the original. But Perec's language is always tight, witty, and deeply insightful. This is certainly one of the great works of world fiction, and absolutely not to be missed.