false 28293 19 Life is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante's <i>Commedia</i> and Chaucer's <i>Canterbury Tales</i> and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce's <i>Ulysses</i>. Perec's spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, like an onion being peeled, and extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging murderer, from a young ethnographer obsessed with a Sumatran tribe to the death of a trapeze artist, from the fears of an ex-croupier to the dreams of a sex-change pop star to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime, Life is a manual of human irony, portraying the mixed marriages of fortunes, passions and despairs, betrayals and bereavements, of hundreds of lives in Paris and around the world.<br><br>But the novel in more than an extraordinary range of fictions; it is a closely observed account of life and experience. The apartment block's one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book as a whole is peppered with a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formulae. All are there for the reader to solve in the best tradition of the detective novel. 1953902 book 1978 Life: A User's Manual total:452|5:244|4:134|3:52|2:13|1:9| 452 1947 1073 60 5 12 false false Tue Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sun Apr 15 23:57:17 -0700 2007 Mon Apr 16 00:03:07 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 3 false false Sun Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Dec 23 15:06:37 -0800 2007 Tue Jun 17 03:11:09 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 03 21:59:43 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 11 10:06:12 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Apr 01 20:41:31 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 02 08:07:30 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Mar 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Feb 23 08:09:00 -0800 2009 Thu Mar 12 07:46:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Tue Sep 02 10:50:36 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 02 10:55:54 -0700 2008
I read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it without knowing anything about its construction or the eccentricities of its author, Georges Perec...more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Apr 23 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jan 08 12:41:03 -0800 2008 Wed Apr 23 16:08:39 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Fri Aug 24 20:58:22 -0700 2007 Thu Jan 15 14:24:59 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Mar 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 24 08:57:46 -0700 2007 Fri Apr 03 04:39:36 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Oct 11 08:19:09 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 11 08:29:46 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jul 02 22:34:52 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 03 08:27:08 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Sep 08 13:19:02 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 28 17:05:37 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 19 11:28:44 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 09:48:51 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Jun 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 16 19:15:25 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 17 10:23:55 -0700 2009
ADDITION: Okay, so it's been a year since I finished this and it looms ever larger in my memory. This book is the bee's ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Feb 26 15:58:37 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 26 15:58:37 -0800 2009
La vie mode d'emploi: roman(s)
Paris Editions Hachette Litterature 1978
Boston: David R Godine, 1987
David Bellos, trans

"scialytic": intriguing; made me think of joyce's vocab but he's not serious, made me think of Ma...more...]]> 0 0 false false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 26 19:23:34 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 08 02:32:40 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Nov 30 20:14:53 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 30 20:21:39 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Sat Oct 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 05:07:38 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 27 13:39:47 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 13 18:59:06 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 13 18:59:54 -0700 2007 Its episodic structure means th...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Nov 26 08:19:57 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 05 09:03:13 -0800 2007 Charles in Charge and shopping for the right toothbrush. He teases a stunning amount of compelling character development and narrative flow from a book of room descriptio...more...]]>