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A Void

By Georges Perec Gilbert Adair
A Void As his country is torn apart by social and political anarchy Anton Vowl a chronic insomniac disappears Ransacking his Paris flat a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any

  • Title: A Void
  • Author: Georges Perec Gilbert Adair
  • ISBN: 9781567922967
  • Page: 458
  • Format: Paperback

    • As his country is torn apart by social and political anarchy, Anton Vowl, a chronic insomniac, disappears Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any indication, for any faint hint, as to his location.

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    A Void

    About Author

    1. Georges Perec Gilbert Adair says:
      Georges Perec was a highly regarded French novelist, filmmaker and essayist He was a member of the Oulipo group Many of his novels and essays abound with experimental wordplay, lists and attempts at classification, and they are usually tinged with melancholy.Born in a working class district of Paris, Perec was the only son of Icek Judko and Cyrla Schulewicz Peretz, Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s He was a distant relative of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz Perec s first novel, Les Choses Things A Story of the Sixties was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.In 1978, Perec won the prix M dicis for Life A User s Manual French title, La Vie mode d emploi , possibly his best known work The 99 chapters of this 600 page piece move like a knight s tour of a chessboard around the room plan of a Paris apartment building, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.Cantatrix Sopranica L is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the yelling reaction provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes All the references in the paper are multi lingual puns and jokes, e.g Karybb et Scyla, 1973.Perec is also noted for his constrained writing his 300 page novel La disparition 1969 is a lipogram, written without ever using the letter e It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void 1994 The silent disappearance of the letter might be considered a metaphor for the Jewish experience during the Second World War Since the name Georges Perec is full of e s, the disappearance of the letter also ensures the author s own disappearance.His novella Les revenentes 1972 is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter e is the only vowel used This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three.It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far those containing both e and a vowel other than e.W ou le souvenir d enfance, W, or, the Memory of Childhood, 1975 is a semi autobiographical work which is hard to classify Two alternating narratives make up the volume one, a fictional outline of a totalitarian island country called W , patterned partly on life in a concentration camp and the second, descriptions of childhood Both merge towards the end when the common theme of the Holocaust is explained.A heavy smoker throughout his life, Perec was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1981 and he died the following year in Ivry sur Seine at only forty five years old His ashes are held at the columbarium of the P re Lachaise Cemetery.David Bellos wrote an extensive biography of Perec Georges Perec A Life in Words, which won the Acad mie Goncourt s bourse for biography in 1994.

    Comment 485 on “A Void”

    1. Manny says:
      God, this is hard I m just aiming for two to four paragraphs, and I m stuck I can hardly do a thing And this guy has a solid book, with a plot and all Smart, no doubt about it But what s this book s point Naturally, you want to know that, and so do I I think that I can say it in this way You might lack an important thing, and not know it s missing Your world looks okay, almost normal But no, in fact it s not normal or okay at all, if you think a bit The rest of this review is available elsewhere [...]
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    2. Jessica says:
      A girl I room with owns this book, and following our talk tonight about it at our local bar, I m now looking into A Void I doubt I ll go far in my try, but will admit to a strong curiosity, though his story might not turn out so amazing No doubt this was a blast to craft, but, I hazard, not as much fun to look through, sort of similar to studying a crossword you didn t do Still, I ll sally forth boldly with a stab at it Why not FYI, I m now involuntarily thinking within the limits put down by th [...]
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    3. Emma Sea says:
      OH MY GOD No Just no.I am taking my own advice life is too shorts Perec and Adair are both very clever And I actually enjoyed the introduction I would have been happy to have left it there a short, witty, intellectual exercise But it s Johnson s dog I have abandoned the book, like a broken umbrella It s in the magazine holder at Columbus Coffee next to Auckland Hospital Have at it, fellow Aucklanders.
      Reply

    4. Madeleine says:
      Okay Let s all take a second to appreciate that this was both written and translated without a single instance of the letter e You have to respect that kind of lipogrammic dedication on both the author s and translator s parts translating the puns to be relevant in another language deserves additional kudos Its effect on the dialogue, narrative and story itself is a wonder to behold in its own right.This is a hard one to review because most of what I want to say would divulge too many spoilers a [...]
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    5. Sinem A. says:
      Zeka ve d ygunun birle ti i okudu um en iyi edebiyat oyunlar ndan biri.
      Reply

    6. Whitaker says:
      What It s About A Short AccountAnton Voyl is ill Insomnia and illusions assail him Doctors, pills, visits to hospitals bring no avail At night, Anton scrawls drafts of fictional accounts, such as a story of Aignan killing a sphinx and fucking 3 , all unknowingly, his mama 3 Days and nights pass thus, all bringing only pain His body shrinks, until, finally, oblivion claims him His pal 3 , Amaury Conson, looks for him His only hint is Anton s last puzzling mail with this post scriptum, his last wo [...]
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    7. Nathan "N.R." Gaddis says:
      Occasionally one finds succinct answers to the rather conservation sic obv we mean conservative objections that all this POMO is just self indulgent game playing with language, etc And, yes, we can blame DFW for earning this lazy accusation so much cred I really don t want to rehearse all the various variations these kinds of things take on You know, like with Husserl, that The work is the thing Nevertheless, one might always provide one of those gottcha moments which you always believe would pu [...]
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    8. Adam Floridia says:
      Holy shit That s really all I wanted this review to be, but I ve got to add two complaints 1 I WISH I had just happened upon this book without knowing what the gimmick said with NO negative connotation was Of course, I would have needed an edition that did not have this spoiler of a cover, either My assumption is that most people, like me, now read this book simply because they ve heard it s that book with or without Just in case you re reading this and don t know, PLEASE just read the book with [...]
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    9. Michael Finocchiaro says:
      I was disappointed with this book despite having high hopes for it In homage to his father s passing, Perec took on the nearly impossible task of writing a book without the letter e which in French is quite a challenge The missing e of course represents his father, but the story seems forced because of this constraint I found that the narrative was not really that interesting and he ended up recycling some of the same expressions over and over again to ensure he got the length of the book to nov [...]
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    10. James says:
      An amazing, frustrating, frivolous absurdity of a book Consumption of a void is akin to watching a dog play Mozarts most popular hits on a harpsichord You applaud Spot s instructors bragadaccio but any appraisal of musical quality is moot In A Void s plot is a soap drama of ironic stupidity in stark contrast to its amazing wordplay Anton Vowl has vanished and soon his flock of pals start dying in highly idiotic ways Not that you in any way mind, as I was far too busy admiring the singular primac [...]
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    11. Jack Waters says:
      4.5 stars Vowl is missing That s corr ct Anton Vowl, protagonist, nds up missing at on point But pl nty of oth r vow ls ar missing as w ll, s ing as A Void is an incr dibl lipogram in Not only did G org s P r c, whos first and last nam contain two s, writ th ntir nov l in his nativ Fr nch without th ir l tt r , but th translator Gilb rt Adair, h of only on in his nam , has translat d it without s into nglish, a languag so rif and rich with s that it b gins with th l tt r and capitaliz d to boot [...]
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    12. Jason says:
      Totally satisfying, though not for folks lacking stoicism and assiduity Probably most highly thought of by souls familiar with and forgiving of structuralist and po mo thought I still cannot avoid basking in our author s playful adaptations of traditional familiar works, such as Ozymandias, Song of Solomon, and a short synopsis of Moby Dick Playful and succinct sort of , with not a Vowl too many.
      Reply

    13. MJ Nicholls says:
      So impressive, the lack of coherence or interest is irrelvant Honestly Try writing a sentence without an E Go on See Five stars.
      Reply

    14. Konserve Ruhlar says:
      Anlamak ve odaklanmak i in en ok kafa yordu um kitaplardan oldu S rad bir yap s var roman n ve asl nda roman demek de ne kadar do ru bilmiyorum lgin , d nd r c , farkl bir al ma.
      Reply

    15. Inderjit Sanghera says:
      A playful, lipogram, in which a syllabic sonant is vacant, A Void is a artistic travail which fits right into Oulipo s brainchild of Raymond Q, alias Raymon Q Knowall in which the central aspiration was to rethink scholarly protocols follows the story of Anton Vowl a missing mad man who is stuck in a continuous accumulation of fictional confabulations and has vanished from the world, leading to the a group of insouciant companions to conduct a chaotic and maniacal pursuit for him.A soporific spi [...]
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    16. Bill says:
      what an amazing book this is a 285 page novel that doesn t contain a single letter e not only that, but it was originally written in french without a single e and then translated into english with the same criteria that must have been one of the most difficult translating jobs everd what s even fantastic is the book actually basically makes sense, has a plot of sorts, and is actually a joy to readd it s fun,because it is quite amusing in parts.i really can t think of much to say about this boo [...]
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    17. Conrad says:
      Two stars it s not that interesting That said, the translator deserves twenty for translating a French novel that omits the letter E into an English novel that does the same In French, if you drop all Es, you can still write the feminine singular form of the Because we don t have an e less version of the, though, the verbal calisthenics that go into doing without the French la are pretty spectacular I m pushing it by filing A Void under read I put it down a little over halfway through because a [...]
      Reply

    18. Aslı Can says:
      Garip bir kitapt , bi kere hi e harfi kullanmadan yazm yazar kitab , evirmen de hi e harfi kullanmadan evirmi Burada dilin imkanlar n g rmek ger ekten a rt c oldu benim i in.Kurgunun i leyi i de ilgin ti, olaylar n gizemi bir yandan yava yava z l rken, bir yandan da olaylar s rekli h z kazan yor Georges Perec in okudu um 3 kitab , okuduk a tan yaca ma daha bi gizem kazan yor benim i in kendisi.Bir de anlamad m bir ekilde evirmen kitab n b l mleri aras nda kendisine de 2 3 sayfal k b l mler ay rm [...]
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    19. Parrish Lantern says:
      A Void La Disparition Georges PerecA Lipogrammatic Synopsis which with artful constraint will focus savor, nay passion and by addition of vigorous acuity and highbrow purport, may transplant mirth as though a frolicking Pan full of ambrosial liquor.As his country is torn apart by social and political anarchy, Anton Vowl, known capricious kook and insomniac, is missing Ransacking his Paris accommodation turning all up and down, all in out , his top, top pals scour his diary for hints to his locat [...]
      Reply

    20. Jeff says:
      I can t choose multiple dates, so instead I ll say here that I tried reading this book in 95, 97, 01, and again in 03 It kills me Every time The insomnia that has plagued me my whole life comes from the way I obsessively think about words and combinations of words This is what goes through my head when I m thinking of nothing else Then this guy Gilbert Adair goes and translates a French novel written by Georges Perec in 1969, and I obsess over it I start reading, and I can t get over how the ori [...]
      Reply

    21. Andrew says:
      AN ANALYSIS THAT WILL LACK A CERTAIN SYMBOLI ll start by saying an apology to the author though I could totally do La Disparition in its original fran ais, I opt for a copy in its anglais avatar, A Void translation isn t a right word in this scenario.So my shock at a man s ability shall go to A Void s translator, Gilbert Adair, who not only could bring La Disparition into its A Void incarnation, but also do oddball translations of oddball translations of Milton, Rimbaud, and so on, in quotation [...]
      Reply

    22. Mientras Leo says:
      Fant stico La ausencia, como la de una letra, puede no ser tan notoria a medida que pasan las p ginas, a medida que avanzamos La novela c mica.
      Reply

    23. Anthony Vacca says:
      This review will be written entirely without the letter wait a secondOh, hell
      Reply


    25. notgettingenough says:
      My shelves speak for themselves Although I ve had words in the past about proofreading, it has never made me start a dedicated shelf But this is warCK THE PROOFREADER Fancy being handed a ms that contains no letter e and not noticing Incroyabl.Further, why wasn t it written by Gorgs Prc Or by somebody else altogether Probably Hungarian
      Reply

    26. Banu Kibar says:
      Beyni farkl al t rmak, d nceyi geni letmek i in derler ki konfor alan ndan s yr l yeni deneyimlere giri Kaybolu , okumadaki bildikleri, al kanl klar , s n rlar zorlayarak yeni bir deneyim sunuyor Kitab n formu, kurgusu, konusu zerine kafa yorarken bir de yazar gibi e kullanmayan evirmen zerine de kafa yordurtan bir okuma ve anlama al mas n n ortas nda okuyucunun da kaybolmas muhtemel Labirentte bir okuma da denebilir.
      Reply

    27. Intortetor says:
      apparentemente la scomparsa di perec sembra un gioco un romanzo scritto completamente senza utilizzare una vocale, la e e il gioco c , intendiamoci quando e siamo ancora ai primi capitoli spunta il riassunto di moby dick scritto in quel modo quindi no balena , cetaceo pesce e persino nave , baleniera e arpione come ha fatto leggetelo e stupitevi si deve chiudere il libro e fermarsi a riflettere su quanto si sia divertito a scriverlo il libro serissimo nella sua logica, che si svela pagina dopo p [...]
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    28. Betül says:
      Roman e harfi kullan lmadan yaz lm ve T rk e ye de o ekilde evrilmi E nin olmamas z hir de yazar k s tlarken, asl nda ona ok geni bir zg rl k alan da a yor Bu k s tlayan zg rl k yazar akl na gelen, haf zas ndan, g nl k kullan m dilinden kard en kolay e li se ene e de il, bir anlamda al kanl n, haf zan n da k s tlay c l n a an, kaybolan geri a ran folklor n, eski dilin imk nlar n kullanarak n nde duran e siz kelime y n ndan bir se im yapmaya, kurgu olu turmaya zorluyor Yasa n n belirleyicili iyle [...]
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    29. Andrew Hudson says:
      This significant book aka La Disparition, though its linguistically cunning author calls for no introduction strains against a troublingly unjust handicap in fact, two It informs of a tall story, that of Anton Vowl, a similar champion of virtuoso wordplay who is lost to a churning, sorrowful world without warning, thus provoking a fatal inquiry amongst bosom companions and distant contacts both, all of whom follow suit in shrugging off this mortal coil by turns but within this account of bodily [...]
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    30. Chuck LoPresti says:
      Bleatless dizzying bliss Creation by omission Literary Renaldo and the Loaf Delicious as any Hambu Hodo I ve ever heard Krasznahorkai with a better sense of humor There is a plot that involves a why dunnit that will not appeal to most fans of mystery writing Rather what Perec seems interested in is a playful semiology of absence, an absence not a always a stark and empty void but but rather a void as structural signifier This is a concept very easily understood by anybody with musical training [...]
      Reply

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