A review by psr
53 Days by Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud, Harry Mathews, David Bellos
4.0
Do you know, I was sure I had reviewed this but it seems I hadn't. An unfinished review for an unfinished book, perhaps? Some of those reviewing the book claim to have been "unable" to finish reading it - now there's an irony, isn't it? Poor Perec had a more compelling reason for the incompletion of his task.
There's a double tragedy here, then. Firstly, that GP died far too young, at a mere 45 from lung cancer. Secondly, that his demise prevented his finishing "53 Days". How could any writer hope to follow a masterwork such as Life a User's Manual? GP wasn't just any writer, though, and there's compelling evidence here that his next book would have proven equally accomplished. In the vein of La Disparition, but to my mind much stronger, it's a cryptic detective story, filled with red herrings, digressions and puzzles. Once again, it involves the search for a missing person, set in a sinister unnamed country. Just as the plot starts to unfold in Chapter Eleven, the novel grinds to a halt.
The remaining seventeen chapters of the novel, such as it is, have been compiled from GP's notes. The unfinished nature of the work - and we're talking truly unfinished, not in the mode of a Kafka novel - clearly undermines the reading experience and prevents a full appreciation of what the novelist might have achieved. On the other hand, something that does enhance the experience is the sheer quality of the splendid Godine edition. And it does provide a fascinating insight into GP's compositional methods. To be honest, I'd still rather have this part-finished work by Perec than the vast majority of fully-realised novels by lesser writers. On the subject of which... 16 reviews on Goodreads? Sixteen reviews? Is the world finally brain dead?
Notes for the remainder of the review:
Was GP influenced by the Don Isidro Parodi stories?
What else might have GP written had he not died in his prime?
What is the point in reviews that ape the style/format of the book in question in an attempt to seem clever? None. I'll finish here, then.
There's a double tragedy here, then. Firstly, that GP died far too young, at a mere 45 from lung cancer. Secondly, that his demise prevented his finishing "53 Days". How could any writer hope to follow a masterwork such as Life a User's Manual? GP wasn't just any writer, though, and there's compelling evidence here that his next book would have proven equally accomplished. In the vein of La Disparition, but to my mind much stronger, it's a cryptic detective story, filled with red herrings, digressions and puzzles. Once again, it involves the search for a missing person, set in a sinister unnamed country. Just as the plot starts to unfold in Chapter Eleven, the novel grinds to a halt.
The remaining seventeen chapters of the novel, such as it is, have been compiled from GP's notes. The unfinished nature of the work - and we're talking truly unfinished, not in the mode of a Kafka novel - clearly undermines the reading experience and prevents a full appreciation of what the novelist might have achieved. On the other hand, something that does enhance the experience is the sheer quality of the splendid Godine edition. And it does provide a fascinating insight into GP's compositional methods. To be honest, I'd still rather have this part-finished work by Perec than the vast majority of fully-realised novels by lesser writers. On the subject of which... 16 reviews on Goodreads? Sixteen reviews? Is the world finally brain dead?
Notes for the remainder of the review:
Was GP influenced by the Don Isidro Parodi stories?
What else might have GP written had he not died in his prime?
What is the point in reviews that ape the style/format of the book in question in an attempt to seem clever? None. I'll finish here, then.