ardinareads's review against another edition
3.0
in this 55 page book, georges perec sits at a cafe at Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris and records everything he sees in front of him. “what happens when nothing happens,” perec records, in basically a list, each bus that passes, the type and color of cars driving by, people and the way they move and what they carry and who they’re with. “why count the buses? probably because theyre recognizable and regular: they cut up time, they punctuate the background noise; ultimately, they’re foreseeable. the rest seems random, improbable, anarchic.” As the book continues, he “grows tired of buses” and stops recording each bus, which makes the writing feel like slightly less of a list. Some of the writing becomes more contemplative though still just as mundane: “what difference is there between a driver who parks on the first go and another who only manages to do so after several minutes of laborious efforts?” occasionally, perec includes some humor: “a little girl, flanked by her parents (or by her kidnappers) is weeping.”
I picked this book up because I was intrigued by the premise of writing about the ordinariness of life. Rather than a thriller or a mystery filled with drama and suspense, I wanted to appreciate the day-to-day. I kind of appreciated just how boring Perec’s record of daily life was because it felt like kind of true. yet, i realized as i read it that my perception of the “infraordinary” includes a bit more marvel that comes with not knowing what you might come across next. for example, at the getting off bus stop on my way home from work at sunrise, looking up and being shocked by a bright orange and pink sky in between the skyscrapers downtown. or the woman I saw at trader joe’s dressed in a purple from head to toe, her jacket made up of flowers, her skirt rimmed with those same matching flowers, and the strangers i watched pass her by with a smile or a compliment. Or the most perfectly white fluffy cloud I saw on the horizon while going on a walk with my friend Erin that made us reminisce on childhood when we imagined how it would feel to lay on a cloud. those little surprises tucked in between all of the buses and cars and people that make no impression are what feel special about the ordinariness of life.
Another thing I didn’t like was the way in which perec called all asians “japanese,” something I’ve noticed is common in european cultures. Like do they not have a word for “asian” so they just take one country and use it as the descriptor? no I know they have a word for it so they’re just being racist!
affiknittyreads's review against another edition
A book like this sort of defies reviewing or rating. Is it an essay? Is it a historical document? Is it a list? Answer: yes. I can’t remember what brought this book to my attention, possibly a listicle of French books somewhere. In any case, I was intrigued by the idea and also suspected that it might make me feel as though I had enjoyed a little bit of Paris, a place I really miss. Over the course of three days, beginning on October 18, 1974 (which also happens to have been my sister’s fourth birthday), Perec sits in the Place Saint-Sulpice and attempts to note everything he sees happening there. Lots of pigeons, pedestrians, shopping bags, automobiles. Friends who happen to walk by and say hello are catalogued. Each of the buses that passes is recorded by number. Marc Lowenthal’s afterword draws the connection between this and Perec‘s mentor Raymond Queneau, who famously loved riding Paris buses and who featured an incident on a bus in his work Exercises in Style. (As an aside, the afterword did help me better appreciate the book, even if it sunk into self-indulgent melancholy at the end, haha.) Interestingly, as I learned from the afterword, Perec also wrote a work which was the inverse of this. Whereas this is 55 pages cataloguing everything that happens in one spot over the course of three days, his book Life A User’s Manual is 600 pages exhaustively detailing a single apartment building in Paris at one very specific moment in time (8AM on June 23, 1975). I’m not sure I have the stamina for that, but this was an interesting read that explored the fleeting nature of time and existence in a different way than some of the Japanese books I have been reading.
jasonfurman's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting exercise in Georges Perec observing everything from Place Saint-Suplice in Paris over a three day period in October 1974. He exhaustively records colors, buses, people passing by, the different angles of vision, just about everything except the grand, historic and architectural items that would comprise just about every other account of Place Saint-Suplice. It feels like a performance art exercise that is interesting and thought provoking enough to justify the amount of time/attention it takes to read through the relatively sparse 50 or so pages of the book. It is the only Perec I have read but I would try more.
zoewong's review against another edition
"There are people who read while walking, not a lot, but a few."
this short strange little book made me think about what it means to know a place, and how knowing and belonging might be similar/different/connected. it also reminded me that good writers and interesting people pay close attention to the world, even "when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds. (something like Lemony Snicket/Charles Baudelaire's flaneur??)
this was not from the book itself but it was attached in the PDF that I read and I wanted to remember it: "Question your tea spoons" — meaning a call to rediscover the familiar, to pay attention, to "question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us."
this short strange little book made me think about what it means to know a place, and how knowing and belonging might be similar/different/connected. it also reminded me that good writers and interesting people pay close attention to the world, even "when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds. (something like Lemony Snicket/Charles Baudelaire's flaneur??)
this was not from the book itself but it was attached in the PDF that I read and I wanted to remember it: "Question your tea spoons" — meaning a call to rediscover the familiar, to pay attention, to "question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us."
jackflagg's review against another edition
4.0
(This review later evolved into an essay on Medium.)
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris is a strange, experimental psychogeographical novel. The whole book is a comprehensive list of things the author sees and sometimes does during the course of three days in a busy Square in Paris (Place Saint-Sulpice), in an attempt to... exhaust the place. He lists everything: the buses that pass by, the pigeons that fly around, the people that cross in front of him and so on, and mentions them each time they occur.
At times he interrupts this list of mundane things with details and fleeting thoughts. It might not be a piece of great, challenging writing, but after a while of reading these items, the Square comes alive and you no longer see these as random, disjointed elements, but as integral pieces that keep the place awake and conscious. The flight of the pigeons and the passing of the buses become like a rhythm that is peppered with little details such as a child with a toy, a hearse with a casket or a man stopping to say hello to a dog.
Author and psychogeographer Arthur Machen, who lived by Gray's Inn Road in London once wrote:
The mundane is just as crucial and intrinsic to life as the exceptional and this book illustrates it very well. I believe this kind of exercise should be practiced more often. I also wish such short books would become more common and popular; even though they take more effort than the now ubiquitous pictures and video timelapses, they carry more weight and make you appreciate the little things more.
How wonderful would it have been to have such snapshots of mundane life from ancient cities and fallen empires? Alas, at least we have a portrait of everyday 70's life in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.
An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris is a strange, experimental psychogeographical novel. The whole book is a comprehensive list of things the author sees and sometimes does during the course of three days in a busy Square in Paris (Place Saint-Sulpice), in an attempt to... exhaust the place. He lists everything: the buses that pass by, the pigeons that fly around, the people that cross in front of him and so on, and mentions them each time they occur.
My intention in the pages that follow was to describe the rest instead: that which is generally not taken note of, that which is not noticed, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.
At times he interrupts this list of mundane things with details and fleeting thoughts. It might not be a piece of great, challenging writing, but after a while of reading these items, the Square comes alive and you no longer see these as random, disjointed elements, but as integral pieces that keep the place awake and conscious. The flight of the pigeons and the passing of the buses become like a rhythm that is peppered with little details such as a child with a toy, a hearse with a casket or a man stopping to say hello to a dog.
Author and psychogeographer Arthur Machen, who lived by Gray's Inn Road in London once wrote:
... he who cannot find wonder, mystery, awe, the sense of a new world and an undiscovered realm in the places by the Gray's Inn Road will never find those places elsewhere, not in the heart of Africa, not in the fabled hidden cities of Tibet.
The mundane is just as crucial and intrinsic to life as the exceptional and this book illustrates it very well. I believe this kind of exercise should be practiced more often. I also wish such short books would become more common and popular; even though they take more effort than the now ubiquitous pictures and video timelapses, they carry more weight and make you appreciate the little things more.
How wonderful would it have been to have such snapshots of mundane life from ancient cities and fallen empires? Alas, at least we have a portrait of everyday 70's life in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.