Georges Perec (born George Peretz) (7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was murdered in the Holocaust, and many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play.
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 remote island country called “W”, at first appears to be a utopian society modeled on the Olympic ideal, but is gradually exposed as a horrifying, totalitarian prison much like a concentration camp. The second narrative is a description of Perec’s own childhood during and after World War II. Both narratives converge towards the end, highlighting the common theme of the Holocaust. (Wikipedia)
Perec, Postmodernism, and Life Writing
Postmodernism, by putting truth in question (or in brackets) does not necessarily abandon either politics or ethics.
See also the conversation video: On Georges Perec.
- Perec, Georges. W, or the Memory of Childhood. Trans. David Bellos. Boston, MA: David R Godine, 1988.
Perrier is a brand of bottled carbonated mineral water (now owned by the Swiss multinational, Nestlé), which uses water captured from a source in Vergèze, southern France, not far from Marseille. More generally, “Vichy water” (whether it came from the spa town of Vichy itself, to the north of Vergèze, or not) was once the generic name for a range of similar mineral waters, such that waters bottled over the border in Catalonia (Vichy Catalan) or even in the United States (Saratoga Vichy, now discontinued) could take on the appellation. But the geographical and political resonances remain. At the very end of Casablanca (1942), the local police prefect, Captain Renault, who has just allowed a pair of refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe to flee, opens a bottle of Vichy water only to dump it in a wastepaper basket. He and Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine then walk off in the fog, headed towards the Free French garrison at Brazzaville.
- Bellos, David. Georges Perec: A Life in Words. Boston, MA: David R Godine, 1993.
- Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
- Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Perec Questions
- Where does this book begin? What does it say about origins and beginnings?
- What is the relationship between “W” and “the memory of childhood”?
- How does Perec show the devolution of sport and sporting ideals into something like barbarism?
- In what ways does W come to resemble a concentration camp?
- What does this book have to say about naming and names?
- What is the significance of “suspension” in the book?
- When is Perec unable to say something, and when is he unwilling to say it? What’s the role of the secret in this book?
- What is the relationship between witness, victim, and survivor?
- Is this a political book? Is it about politics?
- What is the relationship between personal and public history here?
- To what extent can we (or should we) try to fill in the many blanks and gaps that Perec leaves open?
The following questions are taken from your blog posts…
On the title:
Why do you think the title is “W, or the Memory of Childhood” and not “W, and the Memory of Childhood”?
On Genre and Components:
Why do you think Perec chose to include the story of W along with his autobiography?
What relationship did those two stories share?
Do you agree with the author that this story can only be told with the two alternating texts? Could this story exist with only one of the texts?
How do the two narratives compare regarding the two men witnessing and being a part of injustice in their environment?
Why does Perec use the parallel narrative structure with multiple different narratives taking place at once?
Based on the novel, does knowing childhood memories or knowing history seem an essential part of building a character?
I’m wondering if other people thought the fact that there were two stories a positive or a negative thing? Did you look forward to one of them more than the other?
Do you think the author decided to include alternating chapters to connect the stories more in the text? And how do you think this helped shape the story’s themes/similarities to be more connected?
What did you think of W, do you think it was an effective part of the story? If so, what did it achieve?
The question of whether the stories we tell reflect our lives, or if lived experiences reflect the stories.
How deeply can you be affected by a story if you are not interested in the actual writing?
What might have pushed Perec to include the “double-vie” pun in the title? Was it just a postmodern stylistic choice or is there a particular message that he tries to convey to the reader right from the start?
On Gaspard Winckler:
I still wonder why he is even in the book at all. Is he a victim of tragedy conveniently forgotten in place of something bigger, more “important”?
Why do you think Perec elects not to tell us? What do you think happened to the little boy?
Does Gaspard Winckler have any connection to W? Why or why not?
To what extent can it be said that Gaspard Winckler is the fictional double of Perec?
On Remembering/Forgetting:
Does anyone else have similar experiences in which we vividly remember something that turns out to have not happened?
Do you have any memory of your childhood, that at that moment you did not understand as well as you do now?
Is it possible to ever really reconnect with a part of you that wasn’t really yours to begin with? Can that sort of past really be reclaimed?
Do you think it is possible for someone to have no recollection, or very little of their childhood, especially when there are other vivid and traumatic memories?
Do you think that the narrator’s gaps in memory work as a form of protection and is a good thing or do you think that despite how tragic and traumatic his memories were that knowing is better than always wondering?
How do the author’s childhood memories relate to the story of W Island?
What is the significance of Georges’s childhood memories?
Do you understand the feeling of wanting to remember only certain memories or in certain ways? How did this book affect you both physically and emotionally?
Do you think forgetting memories is a valid way of progressing past trauma? Or do you think addressing the situation head on is more effective? Do we get to choose to forget or address?
Do you think one is able to find a sense of belonging from their memories?
Is the narrator experiencing blocking/blacking out these “lost memories”? Do we trust the accuracy of our narrator despite the trauma that may affect the story? Does it even matter?
At what point do most memories lose their accuracy? Is it common for our all memories to be slightly incorrect? And how will we ever know if what we remember is accurate?
Do you think Perec forgetting most of his childhood would reflect on his current development of who he is as a person or not?
Do you feel like you know your childhood well, and why? Even more so, for the parts you may not remember, is it due to trauma or why do you think those parts are missing?
Why do you think memories seem to fade over time? Do you think the narrator lost or chose to block out his childhood memories as a coping mechanism?
“Style vs. substance” debate. Do you think good stylistic elements do not improve art that seemingly lacks in substance or does the style inform substance? What stylistic elements of W stood out to you?
Is one part of Perec’s novel more of a resistance than the others, perhaps partially hidden in that way? Or is the resistance in the entire work, performed simply by sharing the stories of experiences that some would rather ignore?
Why is his memory of childhood ‘more accurate’ as an adult than when he was a child, much closer to the events actually occurring?
Do you think Georges vague memories could be trauma related?
Do you think that the narrator had more memory of his childhood than he initially claimed to have? And what are the reasons that he might not admit this?
Do you believe that it is entirely possible for us to shut down and forget a memory entirely or that it just simply goes somewhere else where it might come out again?
On Sports & War:
What kind of role did the specific sports rules on W play in the whole story?
How does comparing the conditions faced in WW2 to W help Perec or the reader process these events?
Did this book change your perceptions about Nazi Germany? How? Did you find this style of writing to be effective in communicating the true horrors of a time that we cannot personally experience?
How readers perceived the impact of war and catastrophe on Perec’s recollection of memories, and his writing in general?
On Geography & Place:
Are there any special considerations for Perec to set W close to Tierra del Fuego?
Why is the first story set by the island Tierra del Fuego (“Land of Fire”)? Do you think there is a deeper meaning to this setting?
What is the effect of describing the places in detail along with his memory?
On Government:
If the government watches over us, then who watches over the government and how does this aspect relate to trauma if it does?
