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the complete review - reminiscences

I Remember

by
Georges Perec

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : nicely done, interesting glimpses of Perec's life

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "If Brainard's reminiscences are intimate and suggestive, Perec's may strike readers as geeky. (...) (M)ostly a joyous, if fragmented, summoning up of an already faded world. " - Tom Payne, The Spectator
  
  
• "Unfortunately, despite the incredible vitality of Perec’s writing in general, his I Remember turns out to lack the evocative power of Brainard’s original. Partly this is because the memories Perec recounts draw upon a cultural history almost entirely unavailable to non-French readers; but the difference is also stylistic. Next to Brainard’s intensely personal tableaux, Perec’s numbered entries fall flat, and lack the spark and energy of an active mind remembering." - Wall Street Journal, Martin Riker

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       A short introductory note to Je me souviens [now finally availabe in English, as I Remember] explains that the title, form, and, to a certain extent, spirit of these texts were inspired by Joe Brainard's I remember. Each of the 480 pieces collected here -- most just a single sentence -- is written: "Je me souviens ..." ("I remember ..."), and they consist of short "souvenirs" -- personal and shared memories, the small (and large) things that are incidental in life, momentarily significant and then often practically (but not entirely) lost.
       They range from the utterly banal and everyday ("Je me souviens des trous dans les tickets de méro" ("I remember the holes in the Métro tickets")) to any number of people (from musicians to Yury Gagarin to "Christine Keeler et de l'affaire Profumo") to movies, periodicals, and books ("Je me souviens de How to be an alien et de How to scrape skies, de Georges Mikes").
       In a brief afterword Perec explains that most of the memories come from when he was between the ages of ten and twenty-five (though there are a few more recent ones scattered in). Not everything, he admits, is correctly recalled -- but then that's the way memory works, distorting over time.
       The 480 entries don't add up to a complete picture of either Perec or an era, but, put together, they do reveal a good deal about what Perec was exposed to, interested in, and particularly aware of. These memories seem almost neutral -- snapshots, without commentary -- and yet there are enough of them for the reader to begin to flesh out the man behind them.

       Je me souviens is only a small piece of Perec-autobiography, but it is an appealing one, suggestive and whimsical. While of greatest interest to Perec-fans, it holds some interest for others too, sketching out French intellectual and artistic life in the two decades after World War II.

       Note that Je me souviens is dedicated to Harry Matthews; in a nice tribute, Mathews responded in kind with his collection of memories of Perec, in The Orchard (included in The Way Home).

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Links:

• David R. Godine publicity page
• Gallic publicity page
• Fayard publicity page
• Excerpt

• Bookslut
• Music & Literature
• Rain Taxi
• 3:AM
• Winstonsdad's Blog

• The complete review's Georges Perec page
• Georges Perec at books and writers
• Association Georges Perec
• Reading Georges Perec by Warren Motte

• Oulipo site

• Joe Brainard site
• I Remember, from Granary Books

• An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
• the art and craft of approaching your head of department to submit a request for a raise (US title: The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise)
• "53 Days"
• La Boutique Obscure
• Life A User's Manual
• The Machine
• A Man Asleep
• Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere (UK title: Portrait of a Man)
• A Short Treatise Inviting the Reader to Discover the Subtle Art of Go (with Pierre Lusson and Jacques Roubaud)
• Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
• Things
• Thoughts of Sorts
• Three
• Wishes
• See also: AA files 45/46: Georges Perec + Paris

• David Bellos' biography, Georges Perec
• See also Harry Mathews' recollections in The Way Home

• Harry Mathews' The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium
• Harry Mathews' Tlooth

• See Index of Oulipo books under review
• See also the Index of French literature at the complete review

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About the Author:

       The great French writer Georges Perec (1936-1982) studied sociology at the Sorbonne and worked as a research librarian. His first published novel, Les Choses, won the 1965 Prix Renaudot. A member of the Oulipo since 1967 he wrote a wide variety of pieces, ranging from his impressive fictions to a weekly crossword for Le Point.

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