Life A User's ManualOver twenty years ago, Godine published the first English translation of Georges Perec's masterpiece, Life A User's Manual, hailed by the Times Literary Supplement, Boston Globe, and others as "one of the great novels of the century." We are now proud to announce a newly revised twentieth anniversary edition of Life. Carefully prepared, with many corrections, this edition of Life A User's Manual will be the preferred reference edition for the future. Life is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's Commedia and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's Ulysses. Structured around a single moment in time — 8:00 p.m. on June 23, 1975 — Perec's spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, like an onion being peeled, an extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging murderer, from a young ethnographer obsessed with a Sumatran tribe to the death of a trapeze artist, from the fears of an ex-croupier to the dreams of a sex-change pop star to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime, Life is a manual of human irony, portraying the mixed marriages of fortunes, passions and despairs, betrayals and bereavements, of hundreds of lives in Paris and around the world. But the novel is more than an extraordinary range of fictions; it is a closely observed account of life and experience. The apartment block's one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book as a whole is peppered with a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formula. All are there for the reader to solve in the best tradition of the detective novel. |
Contents
Preamble | |
Three Third Floor Right 1 | |
Six Breidel Servants Quarters | |
Nine Nieto and Rogers Servants Quarters | |
Fourteen Dinteville 1 | |
Fifteen SmautfServants Quarters | |
Twenty Moreau 1 | |
Entrance Hall 1 | |
FiftyFour Plassaert 3 | |
FiftyFive Fresnel Servants Quarters | |
FiftyEight Gratiolet 1 | |
Sixty Cinoc 1 | |
SixtyTwo Altamont 3 | |
SixtyFive Moreau 3 | |
SixtySix Marcia 4 | |
SixtyEight On the Stairs 9 | |
TwentyThree Moreau 2 | |
TwentyFive Altamont 2 | |
TwentySeven Rorschach 3 | |
TwentyNine Third Floor Right 2 | |
ThirtyTwo Marcia 2 | |
ThirtyFive The Concierges Office | |
Marcia 3 | |
FortyOne Marquiseaux 3 | |
FortyThree Foulerot 2 | |
FortyFive Plassaert 1 | |
FortySix Monsieur Jérôme Servants Quarters | |
Fifty Foulerot 3 | |
The FiftyFirst Valène Servants Quarters | |
SeventyOne Moreau 4 | |
SeventyThree Marcia 5 | |
SeventyFour Lift Machinery 2 | |
SeventySeven Louvet 2 | |
SeventyNine On the Stairs 11 | |
EightyOne Rorschach 4 | |
EightyFour Cinoc 2 | |
EightySix Rorschach 5 | |
EightyEight Altamont 5 | |
EightyNine Moreau 5 | |
NinetyOne Basement 5 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Altamont Appenzzell Aurelio Lopez Bartlebooth Beaumont bedroom began beside Beyssandre bottle Breidel building called CHAPTER colour concierge Danglars death decorated depicting didn’t Dinteville door dressed Echard eyes Eyetie flat floor four France French Fresnel furniture Gaspard Winckler GEORGES PEREC girl glass Gomoku Gratiolet grey hand he’d head Hélène hundred Hutting Ingeborg jigsaw jigsaw puzzles later leather Lédignan lefthand letter lived looking Loorens Louis XV Madame Nochère Mademoiselle Crespi managed Marcia Margay Marquiseaux Marvel Houses metal Monsieur Jérôme months Morellet never nineteen Oléron Olivier Gratiolet painted painter Paris Paul Hébert photograph pieces Plassaerts puzzle Rémi Réol righthand Rorschach Rue SimonCrubellier Sherwood sitting Smautf stairs stands took trapeze trousers turned twentyfour Valène vase wall watercolour wearing weeks whilst woman wooden yellow young Zeitgeber