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I really really really liked this book. W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec is part traditional novel, part autobiography, part whatever Perec felt like writing and damn convention. The novel revolves around two disparate narrative, one being … Continue reading → read full post >>

This week’s reading was something else compared to what I had read the other weeks. I first went into the... read full post >>

W, or The Memory of Childhood By George Perec is a novel that contains two narratives at the same time. This is what initially made the novel sort of difficult to read for me read. It did begin to confuse me more and more when the narrations were not making sense of each other. However, … read full post >>

Let me start by saying I apologise for the late post. I was caught up in another assignment and completely lost track of time. About the novel, I found it to be a very interesting and even somewhat appealing read in small degrees. I am well aware that I use the word ‘interesting’ about almost […] read full post >>

I really enjoyed reading W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec! It was the first book I sat through and finished in a day. The novel felt extremely personable and familiar. From the first few pages, the reader is engaged. “For years, I took comfort in such absence of history”, hold tremendous weight […] read full post >>

I found W or the Memory of Childhood to be a fairly fascinating and enjoyable read. I felt that the story was interesting to follow, however, I cannot say that I find it flowed very well. Something as a reader … Continue reading → read full post >>

 I first heard of Georges Perec as a young teen scrolling through Tumblr when I stumbled across a post about another novel of his, A Void, where he avoids the letter 'e' throughout the novel. I was pleasantly surprised when I realised that we'd been assigned his work. Similarly to others whose blog posts I have read, I initially struggled with the two storylines but got used to it fairly quickly. Apparently these two storylines are supposed to depend on each other, rendering each one incomplete without the other. Truthfully, I haven't been able to discern why they are so dependent on each other, though I hope to understand the text a little further after some class discussion. 

I think an important feature of the text is that it has an unreliable narrator, who is telling this story based on unreliable memories and this fictional world of W that he created in his head. I always think an unreliable narrator can be a refreshing twist on the experience of reading a book because it makes you question what you're being told rather than just taking everything at face value. 

I found the parts where the narrator was explaining all the different sports teams and rules a little difficult to follow (not surprising because I'm a little like that when it comes to real teams, forget fictional ones) and became a little lost in the significance of explaining it all in such detail. A potential answer that comes to mind is that it's all just a coping mechanism; there might not be an inherent significance in the sports teams and all the rules and regulations, but simply the fact that it's so detailed shows the amount of time the narrator must have spent inside his own head as an escape from the world around him. Considering that Perec's parents were killed in the Second World War and the Holocaust, it is unsurprising that some of his work should be informed by trauma. 

Throughout the novel there is an interesting discussion of names, where they come from, and the importance we attach to them. My favourite part was when he was discussing the nicknames that were first given to individuals, before eventually being passed down and becoming a status symbol and evolving even further. It makes me want to imagine our own society using names in that same way; I'm not convinced it'd be entirely practical but it would be a fun thought exercise. The question I now pose is: what do you think the significant of all the sport-talk is?

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 I first heard of Georges Perec as a young teen scrolling through Tumblr when I stumbled across a post about another novel of his, A Void, where he avoids the letter 'e' throughout the novel. I was pleasantly surprised when I realised that we'd been assigned his work. Similarly to others whose blog posts I have read, I initially struggled with the two storylines but got used to it fairly quickly. Apparently these two storylines are supposed to depend on each other, rendering each one incomplete without the other. Truthfully, I haven't been able to discern why they are so dependent on each other, though I hope to understand the text a little further after some class discussion. 

I think an important feature of the text is that it has an unreliable narrator, who is telling this story based on unreliable memories and this fictional world of W that he created in his head. I always think an unreliable narrator can be a refreshing twist on the experience of reading a book because it makes you question what you're being told rather than just taking everything at face value. 

I found the parts where the narrator was explaining all the different sports teams and rules a little difficult to follow (not surprising because I'm a little like that when it comes to real teams, forget fictional ones) and became a little lost in the significance of explaining it all in such detail. A potential answer that comes to mind is that it's all just a coping mechanism; there might not be an inherent significance in the sports teams and all the rules and regulations, but simply the fact that it's so detailed shows the amount of time the narrator must have spent inside his own head as an escape from the world around him. Considering that Perec's parents were killed in the Second World War and the Holocaust, it is unsurprising that some of his work should be informed by trauma. 

Throughout the novel there is an interesting discussion of names, where they come from, and the importance we attach to them. My favourite part was when he was discussing the nicknames that were first given to individuals, before eventually being passed down and becoming a status symbol and evolving even further. It makes me want to imagine our own society using names in that same way; I'm not convinced it'd be entirely practical but it would be a fun thought exercise. The question I now pose is: what do you think the significant of all the sport-talk is?

read full post >>

 I found the novel "W, or the Memory of Childhood" by Georges Perec to be an extremely interesting read for me. I found myself getting lost in the memories of his childhood and the descriptions and the way he had forgotten some of it and was sharing what he could remember was really descriptive and something that I found added a lot fo context to the novel. One thing that confused me was that the cities were being represented by Ws or Rs and just single letters in general. This is something that i found myself questioning throughout the novel based on the significance or meaning of the singular letters. I also was confused by what XX or X was being used to represent whether it was to represent the cities in France or streets, etc. 

My question is why do you think just letters were used to represent places or cities throughout the text?

One thing that surprised me in this novel was when Otto Apfelstahl had sought out the narrator to help find the original Gaspard Winckler even though Otto Apfelstahl had known and was clear about the fact that the narrator had just used his name and had no other clues or hints leading back to the case of Gaspard Winckler being missing. This was something that was interesting to me because the level of work he had to do to have the conversation with the narrator and the effort he put in to track him down did not seem to match up with the abilities the narrator was known to have to help Otto Apfelstahl and his team come closer to finding the original Gaspard Winckler. Another thing that was a bit confusing for me was when the narrator had talked about the place referred to as W. W seemed to be an olympic village or city, which I found very interesting, though I found it difficult to adjust to the different storyline n the novel. Overall, this novel was very interesting to me and I think the mixture of the two stories together added a lot of beauty and realism to the text. I was able to see what was going on in the plot and also have a deeper understanding of the childhood and experiences that he had which definitely created a positive impact on the story. This also led me to understand the text a lot more and have a deeper understanding of the narrator and his life. This novel was very unique to other texts that I have read.

read full post >>

 I found the novel "W, or the Memory of Childhood" by Georges Perec to be an extremely interesting read for me. I found myself getting lost in the memories of his childhood and the descriptions and the way he had forgotten some of it and was sharing what he could remember was really descriptive and something that I found added a lot fo context to the novel. One thing that confused me was that the cities were being represented by Ws or Rs and just single letters in general. This is something that i found myself questioning throughout the novel based on the significance or meaning of the singular letters. I also was confused by what XX or X was being used to represent whether it was to represent the cities in France or streets, etc. 

My question is why do you think just letters were used to represent places or cities throughout the text?

One thing that surprised me in this novel was when Otto Apfelstahl had sought out the narrator to help find the original Gaspard Winckler even though Otto Apfelstahl had known and was clear about the fact that the narrator had just used his name and had no other clues or hints leading back to the case of Gaspard Winckler being missing. This was something that was interesting to me because the level of work he had to do to have the conversation with the narrator and the effort he put in to track him down did not seem to match up with the abilities the narrator was known to have to help Otto Apfelstahl and his team come closer to finding the original Gaspard Winckler. Another thing that was a bit confusing for me was when the narrator had talked about the place referred to as W. W seemed to be an olympic village or city, which I found very interesting, though I found it difficult to adjust to the different storyline n the novel. Overall, this novel was very interesting to me and I think the mixture of the two stories together added a lot of beauty and realism to the text. I was able to see what was going on in the plot and also have a deeper understanding of the childhood and experiences that he had which definitely created a positive impact on the story. This also led me to understand the text a lot more and have a deeper understanding of the narrator and his life. This novel was very unique to other texts that I have read.

read full post >>

Georges Perec’s W, or the Memory of Childhood takes a very clear divergence from the typical, albeit not necessarily standard, formula of the novel. The Novel is novel, in its use of quick flashbacks to the childhood of the narrator, and just like it says in the title of the Novel, Perec uses the descriptive, […] read full post >>

I found this novel to be quite unusual and interesting. One never expects to find two parallel narratives in a novel where one is autobiographical and the other fictional. But that is implied in the title “W” and it seems that this is an autobiography for an author without one. The stories merge into one […] read full post >>

As I did my research on this novel, I came across some of the covers that were used in this novel. What I noticed was the consistent wordplay that Perec used. Even on the cover of W, or the memory of Childhood, the “w” was more like two v’s. In french the letter “w” can […] read full post >>

I absolutely adored the concept of this book by Perec and I thoroughly enjoyed every chapter whether it made sense or not.  The themes of fantasy and reality are really expressed here and it shows that the author may be contemplating the choice of W over the realism of his memories. The “real” portion of […] read full post >>

Hey everyone! W Or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec was an especially difficult read for me. It was... read full post >>