Research Catalog

Title

An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris / Georges Perec ; translated by Marc Lowenthal.

Author

Perec, Georges, 1936-1982

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Wakefield Press, c2010.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Lowenthal, Marc
• Lowenthal, Marc, 1969-

Description

55 p.; 18 cm.

Summary

"One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in quest of the "infraordinary": the humdrum, the nonevent, the everyday--"what happens," as he put it, "when nothing happens." His choice of locale was Place Saint-Sulpice where, ensconced behind first one café window, then another, he spent three days recording everything to pass through his field of vision: the people walking by; the buses and driving-school cars caught in their routes; the pigeons moving suddenly en masse, as if in accordance to some mysterious command; the wedding (and then funeral) at the church in the center of the square; the signs, symbols, and slogans littering everything; and the darkness that eventually absorbs it all. In An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Perec compiled a melancholic, slightly eerie, and oddly touching document in which existence boils down to rhythm, writing turns into time, and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin."--Page 4 of cover.

Uniform Title

Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien. English

Alternative Title

Tentative d'épuisement d'un lieu parisien.

Subject

• Perec, Georges, 1936-1982
• Paris (France) > Drama

Genre/Form

Drama

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (page 55).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Machine generated contents note: Attempt At Exhausting A Place In Paris -- Day 1 -- Day 2 -- Day 3.

ISBN

• 9780984115525
• 0984115528

OCLC

• 630506867
• SCSB-12281177

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library