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Georges Perec:

A Life in Words : a Biography
Front Cover
6 Reviews
David R Godine Pub, 1993 - Biography & Autobiography - 802 pages
This is the first complete biography of Georges Perec (1936-1982), novelist, poet, verbal gamesman, master puzzler ? a man at once eccentric, brilliant, and endearingly ordinary, whom Italo Calvino called "so singular a literary personality that he bears absolutely no resemblance to anyone else."Perec's novels are widely regarded as modern classics, but his linguistic mastery actually extended to a stunning variety of forms: from autobiography, drama, and criticism to crossword puzzles and the world's longest palindrome. Ever in search of new verbal challenges, he wrote one novel entirely without the letter e; and in 1978 he published the monumental, structurally complex Life A User's Manual, which many critics have placed (in the words of The Boston Globe) "on the level of Joyce, Proust, Mann, Kafka, and Nabokov."In Georges Perec: A Life in Words, David Bellos, Perec's award-winning English translator, introduces the enigmatic figure behind these remarkable works, showing how Perec's experiences led to such masterpieces as Life, the celebrated Things, and the harrowing W or The Memory of Childhood ? the latter inspired by his parents' deaths during World War II (one of them at Aucshwitz) and by his own sense of guilt as a survivor.Using unpublished documents and firsthand interviews, Bellos details Perec's tragic childhood, his difficult apprenticeship, his emergence into literary renown, and finally his death from cancer at age 46. He traces the influences of Perec's Polish-Jewish background, and of the friendships'with such figures as Calvino, Raymond Queneau, Harry Mathews, and others'that helped shape this extraordinary life. He offers privileged insights, born of many years' reflection and study, into Perec's vertiginous works. He situates Perec as a primary figure of French intellectual life in the 1960s and 1970s, due in part to his collaborations with the radically inventive OuLiPo group (whose name condenses the emblematic phrase "Workshop of Potential Literature"). And he shows the painstaking process by which a phenomenally gifted writer, suffering from a sheltered past crippling emotional burden, reconstructed his life in the only way he knew how: in words.

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Review: Georges Perec: A Life in Words

User Review  - Declan - Goodreads

It's a while since I read this, but I still regard it as one of the best biographies I have read. It is as good as Ellmann's biography of Joyce but, for me, it left me with a feeling that, not only ... Read full review

Review: Georges Perec: A Life in Words

User Review  - Adam Floridia - Goodreads

Dave Bellos : Georges Perec :: Brian Boyd : Vladimir Nabokov More details to follow. (hopefully) Read full review

All 6 reviews »

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References from web pages

Georges Perec: A Life in Words - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Georges Perec: A Life in Words is an authoritative biography of Georges Perec by David Bellos, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Georges_Perec:_A_Life_in_Words

Bellos mss. Inventory
BELLOS MSS. Inventory. I. Georges Perec. Georges Perec: A Life in Words. Box 1. folders 1-6: Correspondence with Harvill Press and various French publishers ...
www.indiana.edu/ ~liblilly/ lilly/ mss/ subfile/ bellosinv.html

Georges Perec: A Life in Words - David R. Godine, Publisher
Georges Perec: A Life in Words: A Biography by David Bellos. This is the first complete biography of Georges Perec (1936-1982), novelist, poet, ...
godine.com/ isbn.asp?isbn=0879239808

Review of Contemporary Fiction, The: Georges Perec: A Life in ...
Georges Perec: A Life in Words. (book reviews). Malin, Irving. David Bellos. A Life in Words. Godine, 1993. 832 pp. $45.00. ...
findarticles.com/ p/ articles/ mi_hb3544/ is_199403/ ai_n8362206/ print

JSTOR: Puzzle Man
REVIEWS Puzzle Man Alice Kaplan David Bellos, Georges Perec: A Life in Words. London: Harvil, 1993. Georges Perec died of cancer at age forty-six in 1982. ...
links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0026-7910(199609)111%3A4%3C797%3APM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

Georges Perec Life Stories, Books, & Links
Georges Perec: A Life in Words by David Bellos biography. FIND BOOKS BY GEORGES PEREC AT Powell's Books tinl Premium Members save 10% on every order! ...
www.todayinliterature.com/ biography/ georges.perec.asp

David Bellos - The New York Review of Books
Georges Perec: A Life in Words: A Biography (1993) Honore De Balzac, Old Goriot (1987) Honore De Balzac, La Cousine Bette (1980) Balzac Criticism in France, ...
www.nybooks.com/ authors/ 1134

Perec, Georges
In his biography, Georges Perec: A Life in Words, David Bellos outlines the history of this name. discrepancy: “Icek Perec [Georges’ father], whose name was ...
www.ohiolink.edu/ etd/ send-pdf.cgi?miami1154639406

Ross Chambers - A Poetics of Quandary. Perec's W ou le souvenir d ...
In Georges Perec, A Life in Words (Boston: Godine, 1993), David Bellos points out (p. 553) that "the letter represented could not pass even for a poorly ...
muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ french_forum/ v031/ 31.2chambers.html

Life A User's Manual : Georges Perec
... เราควรจะทราบประเด็นที่เปเรคสนใจในงานเขียนสักนิด เขาเคยให้สัมภาษณ์ถึงหลัก...
www.faylicity.com/ book/ book1/ lifeuser.html

About the author (1993)

David Bellos is the author of a number of award-winning literary biographies and the winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize for translation in 2005. He lives in New Jersey and teaches French, Italian, and Comparative literature at Princeton University.

Bibliographic information