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A review by taitmckenzie
La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams by Georges Perec
5.0
Anyone not yet convinced that dreams can be a form of art, much less a marketable one, should have told that to Melville House Publishing before they published the dream journals of Georges Perec (“la boutique obscure” translated by Daniel Levin Becker, 2012). Most famous for his novels “Life A Users Manuel” and “A Void” (written entirely without the letter ‘e’), Perec was a highly inventive and linguistically challenging writer who was not above the challenge of trying to record his dreams with the same style of language and plot consistency in which they were dreamed. According to Perec’s introduction to his dream journals, which he called the world’s first “nocturnal autobiography”:
“Everyone has dreams. Some remember theirs, far fewer recount them, and very few write them down. Why write them down, anyway, knowing you will only sell them out (and no doubt sell yourself out in the process)? I thought I was recording the dreams I was having; I have realized that it was not long before I began having dreams only in order to write them. These dreams—overdreamed, overworked, overwritten—what could I then expect of them, if not to make them into texts, a bundle of texts left as an offering at the gates of that “royal road” I still must travel with my eyes open?"
Perec goes on to give some notes on transcribing and composing dream records on the level of typography and page formatting (paragraph breaks indicate changes of style, place, mood as felt within the dream), before presenting the dreams themselves.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a dream journal titled (though not translated as) ‘the obscure shop’ carries with it a certain everyday or quotidian banality—dreams abound of conferences, house-calls, writing crossword puzzles, chasing cats, and buying clothing. One is strongly reminded of the dream journals of French critic Hélène Cixous (published in translation as “Dream I Tell You” in 2006), where the most untoward and dream-like situation is that her daughter keeps transforming into a kitten. While both dreamers are often haunted by scenarios of the World Wars, they also struggle with the mechanisms of dresser drawers and interpersonal relationships (though Perec’s journals do not avoid dreams of sex). Perec’s dreams, though, also indicate a fascinating shift toward a post-modern worldview and literary style.
Born in 1936, Perec’s dreams included in this book were not dreamed until the 1970s-80s, and amongst the quotidian, early-century concerns of his formative subconscious, one finds fascinating moments when Perec finds himself living out the plots of modern movies or demonstrating as a “hippy.” In one dream (no. 52 in the collection), after making dinner reservations Perec, “returned to Paris in a magnificent machine, ultramodern and very sci-fi. I remember panoramic portholes. Dizzying speed.”
“Everyone has dreams. Some remember theirs, far fewer recount them, and very few write them down. Why write them down, anyway, knowing you will only sell them out (and no doubt sell yourself out in the process)? I thought I was recording the dreams I was having; I have realized that it was not long before I began having dreams only in order to write them. These dreams—overdreamed, overworked, overwritten—what could I then expect of them, if not to make them into texts, a bundle of texts left as an offering at the gates of that “royal road” I still must travel with my eyes open?"
Perec goes on to give some notes on transcribing and composing dream records on the level of typography and page formatting (paragraph breaks indicate changes of style, place, mood as felt within the dream), before presenting the dreams themselves.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a dream journal titled (though not translated as) ‘the obscure shop’ carries with it a certain everyday or quotidian banality—dreams abound of conferences, house-calls, writing crossword puzzles, chasing cats, and buying clothing. One is strongly reminded of the dream journals of French critic Hélène Cixous (published in translation as “Dream I Tell You” in 2006), where the most untoward and dream-like situation is that her daughter keeps transforming into a kitten. While both dreamers are often haunted by scenarios of the World Wars, they also struggle with the mechanisms of dresser drawers and interpersonal relationships (though Perec’s journals do not avoid dreams of sex). Perec’s dreams, though, also indicate a fascinating shift toward a post-modern worldview and literary style.
Born in 1936, Perec’s dreams included in this book were not dreamed until the 1970s-80s, and amongst the quotidian, early-century concerns of his formative subconscious, one finds fascinating moments when Perec finds himself living out the plots of modern movies or demonstrating as a “hippy.” In one dream (no. 52 in the collection), after making dinner reservations Perec, “returned to Paris in a magnificent machine, ultramodern and very sci-fi. I remember panoramic portholes. Dizzying speed.”