Finally! An author I know! I have been SLOWLY reading Perec’s A Void for ages now, I really cant get into it because I keep just rereading sections to make sure there is really no ‘e’ there. I have to admit the difficulty I had reading A Void did not give me much hope for this book. I could talk extensively about my appreciation of A Void in an artistic, boundary pushing, breaking away from norms wowee kinda way but as a book goes, it is kinda rough to read honestly. Anyway! Onto the book I am actually meant to be writing about. W, or the Memory of Childhood was pleasantly read-able for me. It became very quickly obvious that there was two seperate sets of memories that were intertwined into eachother. A note at the beginning of the book brough to my attention that ‘W’ should not be thought of as ‘double-u’ as in French it is called ‘double vé.’ I do not know what the word in French but in Spanish I first thought of vida which I guess I should note means life incase you don’t know. The title fits perfectly for the two intertwining stories being told.
The more fantastical storyline occuring in this novel struck me as a childs coping mechanism at first. I know atleast the part about the island W is based off of a story Perec wrote at 13. When this storyline switched over to focusing on the island I was immediately struck by how cultish it felt. I was intrigued and really found myself looking forward to the next part. The extreme conditions the athletes lived in were representative of what Perec’s mother went through in the concentration camps in real life. This comparison lead me to further realize thar this fantastical story was like a parallel world to real life. A still pretty depressing reimagination of the horrific things that a 13 year old may not have been able to fully comprehend.
I pretty quickly became a lot more interested in the story about the island than the chapters about Perec’s fragmented and warped childhood memories but overall I really enjoyed both. It was depressing honestly, it wasn’t because of what I was reading but the context around it and this sorta childlike but also disturbing tale being told at the same time made me sad. I am done rambling now I think, I have no other thoughts about this that I can word well. To wrap this up I have a very simple question, which part of this story interested you more?
I unfortunately found this weeks reading to be a bit more difficult to follow than other books we read so far. Not so much in regards to difficult language or translation discrepancies, but rather the multiple storylines that took place throughout the book. In all honesty, I found it quite confusing and found myself having to reread certain passages and pages. From what I gathered, Georges attempts to recall memories from his childhood, while intertwining stories and scenarios from the present.
An initial thought I had after reading the first few chapters, was that it reminded me of our first reading, Swann’s way. In this book, Marcel reflects on his past, specifically childhood and what his relationship was like with his mother and father at the time. I found similarities with this reading, as Georges tries to scrap together memories of his parents before they both perished due to different circumstances during the war. Though most of Georges memories didn’t specifically connect with one another, I found some quite interesting while i felt others were a bit boring. I think part of the reason why I may have found some of these boring is because they seemed to lack emotional depth. In Swann’s Way, for example, Marcel talks about how upset the neglect of his mother made him. With a lot of emotional detail, I truly felt for the character. However, with this reading, I felt as though i was reading descriptions of people or events without receiving much detail on the authors feelings. Which seemed odd to me considering memories are something very personal.
I question if this lack of detail as well as his lack of memory might have something to do with the circumstances under which his parents died. As just a young boy he had to the mourn the loss of both his parents. His father died in the war, and his mother died in the holocaust. Im thinking it’s possible that because of all the chaos and emotional stress he had endured, he lacks memory.
The main thing that has me greatly confused throughout the novel is the multiple storylines and how different they were from one another. Im not too sure how Georges encounter with Otto tied in with his childhood memories, as well as the story of W.
My question for the class: do you think Georges vague memories could be trauma related?
Posted in Blogs, Perec | Tagged with childhood, holocaust, memories, war
I unfortunately found this weeks reading to be a bit more difficult to follow than other books we read so far. Not so much in regards to difficult language or translation discrepancies, but rather the multiple storylines that took place throughout the book. In all honesty, I found it quite confusing and found myself having to reread certain passages and pages. From what I gathered, Georges attempts to recall memories from his childhood, while intertwining stories and scenarios from the present.
An initial thought I had after reading the first few chapters, was that it reminded me of our first reading, Swann’s way. In this book, Marcel reflects on his past, specifically childhood and what his relationship was like with his mother and father at the time. I found similarities with this reading, as Georges tries to scrap together memories of his parents before they both perished due to different circumstances during the war. Though most of Georges memories didn’t specifically connect with one another, I found some quite interesting while i felt others were a bit boring. I think part of the reason why I may have found some of these boring is because they seemed to lack emotional depth. In Swann’s Way, for example, Marcel talks about how upset the neglect of his mother made him. With a lot of emotional detail, I truly felt for the character. However, with this reading, I felt as though i was reading descriptions of people or events without receiving much detail on the authors feelings. Which seemed odd to me considering memories are something very personal.
I question if this lack of detail as well as his lack of memory might have something to do with the circumstances under which his parents died. As just a young boy he had to the mourn the loss of both his parents. His father died in the war, and his mother died in the holocaust. Im thinking it’s possible that because of all the chaos and emotional stress he had endured, he lacks memory.
The main thing that has me greatly confused throughout the novel is the multiple storylines and how different they were from one another. Im not too sure how Georges encounter with Otto tied in with his childhood memories, as well as the story of W.
My question for the class: do you think Georges vague memories could be trauma related?
Posted in Blogs, Perec | Tagged with childhood, holocaust, memories, war
At first glance, I wasn’t sure what to make of Perec’s book’s title. In class, we previously discussed the influence and significance of a title. We first discussed how the choice to keep “Bonjour Tristesse” in its untranslated form gave the book some context in just two words – i.e. that it is French. We […]
Posted in Blogs, Perec | Tagged with childhood, fantasy, memories, reality
W, or the Memory of Childhood is kind of a confusing book that is open for many interpretations. The fact that it was a story written with different narratives and storylines was something I had not read that often, which was kind of interesting. I can absolutely see the postmodern influence of Perec’s writing all […]
Posted in Blogs, Perec | Tagged with childhood, family, memories, memory, narrator, postmodern
This week, I read ‘W, or the memory of childhood’ by Perec Georges.
I was confused at first. In part one, the narrator mentioned how his father died when he was 6 and got adopted by his father’s neighbours. However, in part two his father died when he was 4 and was adopted by his father’s sister and her husband. Then I re-read it and found out that they have mentioned this story will be alternating between two texts. The narrator switched from one story to another. I found this kind of transition distracting as I couldn’t figure if the texts had switched to the other or not. However, it got better as the story progressed because I realized that we are able to tell the story has been switched by the font. One text is in Italic font and the other is not.
Despite the narrator mentioning how he has no memories of his childhood, he kept trying to recall the memories of when he was a kid. His parents passed away when he was young and he barely has any memories with them, yet he still talks about them. On page 12, he mentioned “like everyone else, or almost everyone, I had a father and a mother, a potty, a cat, a rattle, and, later on, a bicycle…Like everyone else, I have forgotten everything about the earliest years of my existence”. I found that texts give off the feelings of loneliness. He may just be expressing that he is like others and has what everyone needs at first. To me, it feels more like he has lost his sense of identity and is sarcastic at the fact that he ‘started’ just like ‘everyone else’. I feel sorry for him as it seems to me that he is trying to connect himself to his parents by the memories of others and the stuff he possesses (ex: photograph of his parents). As the narrator does not have many memories with them, most of the information he knows about them is being told by others (his aunts). He even saved up the money his aunt had given him for the bus just to buy a soldier toy. I believe the reason he got it is due to his father. He wanted to feel more connected to him.
The question I have for the class is: Do you think one is able to find a sense of belonging from their memories?
This week, I read ‘W, or the memory of childhood’ by Perec Georges.
I was confused at first. In part one, the narrator mentioned how his father died when he was 6 and got adopted by his father’s neighbours. However, in part two his father died when he was 4 and was adopted by his father’s sister and her husband. Then I re-read it and found out that they have mentioned this story will be alternating between two texts. The narrator switched from one story to another. I found this kind of transition distracting as I couldn’t figure if the texts had switched to the other or not. However, it got better as the story progressed because I realized that we are able to tell the story has been switched by the font. One text is in Italic font and the other is not.
Despite the narrator mentioning how he has no memories of his childhood, he kept trying to recall the memories of when he was a kid. His parents passed away when he was young and he barely has any memories with them, yet he still talks about them. On page 12, he mentioned “like everyone else, or almost everyone, I had a father and a mother, a potty, a cat, a rattle, and, later on, a bicycle…Like everyone else, I have forgotten everything about the earliest years of my existence”. I found that texts give off the feelings of loneliness. He may just be expressing that he is like others and has what everyone needs at first. To me, it feels more like he has lost his sense of identity and is sarcastic at the fact that he ‘started’ just like ‘everyone else’. I feel sorry for him as it seems to me that he is trying to connect himself to his parents by the memories of others and the stuff he possesses (ex: photograph of his parents). As the narrator does not have many memories with them, most of the information he knows about them is being told by others (his aunts). He even saved up the money his aunt had given him for the bus just to buy a soldier toy. I believe the reason he got it is due to his father. He wanted to feel more connected to him.
The question I have for the class is: Do you think one is able to find a sense of belonging from their memories?
I admittedly found this novel fairly hard to follow; the switching back and forth between different narratives was initially confusing. However, on the theme of memories that have been fractured in some way, perhaps the fragmented writing style of the author is appropriate. The autobiographical portions of the novel take a somber tone as the […]
Posted in Blogs | Tagged with autobiography, childhood, fiction, memories, trauma
This week’s novel, W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec, contains two alternating texts. The author claims these two texts merge together into one to tell a story that can’t be told without the other. At first, I thought it was an interesting idea, especially since one of the texts is an autobiography, […]
Posted in Blogs, Perec | Tagged with blog, memories, repression, trauma
This week’s reading was a bit difficult for me to fully understand the message around the story. For my blog post this week, I decided to focus in on the message surrounding the authors desire for affection from his mother, and memories. A big theme for the story was the idea of memories. Proust touches …
