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Les Choses
L.F: " Les choses " ? C'est un titre qui intrigue, qui alimente les malentendus. Plutôt qu'un livre sur les choses, au fond n'avez-vous pas écrit un livre sur le bonheur ? G. P: C'est qu'il y a, je pense, entre les choses du monde moderne et le bonheur, un rapport obligé. Une certaine richesse de notre civilisation rend un type de bonheur possible : on peut parler, en ce sens, comme d'un bonheur d'0rly, des moquettes profondes, d'une figure actuelle du bonheur qui fait, je crois, que pour être heureux, il faut être absolument moderne. Ceux qui se sont imaginé que je condamnais la société de consommation n'ont vraiment rien compris à mon livre. Mais ce bonheur demeure un possible ; car, dans notre société capitaliste, c'est : choses promises ne sont pas choses dues. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
157 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
About the author
Georges Perec
148 books1,737 followersGeorges Perec was a highly-regarded French novelist, filmmaker, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. Many of his novels and essays abound with experimental wordplay, lists, and attempts at classification, and they are usually tinged with melancholy.
Born in a working-class district of Paris, Perec was the only son of Icek Judko and Cyrla (Schulewicz) Peretz, Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s. He was a distant relative of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz.
Perec's first novel, Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties) was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.
In 1978, Perec won the prix Médicis for Life: A User's Manual (French title, La Vie mode d'emploi), possibly his best-known work. The 99 chapters of this 600 page piece move like a knight's tour of a chessboard around the room plan of a Paris apartment building, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.
Cantatrix Sopranica L. is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the "yelling reaction" provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All the references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes, e.g. "(Karybb et Scyla, 1973)".
Perec is also noted for his constrained writing: his 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is a lipogram, written without ever using the letter "e". It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void (1994). The silent disappearance of the letter might be considered a metaphor for the Jewish experience during the Second World War. Since the name 'Georges Perec' is full of 'e's, the disappearance of the letter also ensures the author's own 'disappearance'.
His novella Les revenentes (1972) is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used. This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes. An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three.
It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far (those containing both "e" and a vowel other than "e").
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 totalitarian island country called "W", patterned partly on life in a concentration camp; and the second, descriptions of childhood. Both merge towards the end when the common theme of the Holocaust is explained.
Perec was a heavy smoker throughout his life, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1981. He died the following year in Ivry-sur-Seine at only forty-five-years old. His ashes are held at the columbarium of the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
David Bellos wrote an extensive biography of Perec: Georges Perec: A Life in Words, which won the Académie Goncourt's bourse for biography in 1994.
Born in a working-class district of Paris, Perec was the only son of Icek Judko and Cyrla (Schulewicz) Peretz, Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s. He was a distant relative of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz.
Perec's first novel, Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties) was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.
In 1978, Perec won the prix Médicis for Life: A User's Manual (French title, La Vie mode d'emploi), possibly his best-known work. The 99 chapters of this 600 page piece move like a knight's tour of a chessboard around the room plan of a Paris apartment building, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.
Cantatrix Sopranica L. is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the "yelling reaction" provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All the references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes, e.g. "(Karybb et Scyla, 1973)".
Perec is also noted for his constrained writing: his 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is a lipogram, written without ever using the letter "e". It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void (1994). The silent disappearance of the letter might be considered a metaphor for the Jewish experience during the Second World War. Since the name 'Georges Perec' is full of 'e's, the disappearance of the letter also ensures the author's own 'disappearance'.
His novella Les revenentes (1972) is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used. This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes. An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three.
It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far (those containing both "e" and a vowel other than "e").
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 totalitarian island country called "W", patterned partly on life in a concentration camp; and the second, descriptions of childhood. Both merge towards the end when the common theme of the Holocaust is explained.
Perec was a heavy smoker throughout his life, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1981. He died the following year in Ivry-sur-Seine at only forty-five-years old. His ashes are held at the columbarium of the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
David Bellos wrote an extensive biography of Perec: Georges Perec: A Life in Words, which won the Académie Goncourt's bourse for biography in 1994.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 9, 2026
4.5 ⭐️
Vprašanje, če si je Perec lahko predstavljal, da bo njegov roman s slovenskim naslovom Stvari in podnaslovom Zgodba iz 1960-ih še kako aktualen še desetletja po 1960-ih s svojim opisom in indirektno kritiko (sploh zahodnega) potrošništva. Delo hkrati postavlja tudi vprašanje, kaj je potrebno za srečno, zadovoljno življenje.
Sylvie in Jérôme, mlad par v začetku 20-ih, prav dobro vesta, s kakšnimi stvarmi bi se rada obkrožila in kako bi se oblačila, da bi bilo njuno življenje perfektno tako za njiju kot navzven. Hkrati sta tudi prepričana, da bi jima ta perfekcija prinesla srečo.
Vprašanje, če si je Perec lahko predstavljal, da bo njegov roman s slovenskim naslovom Stvari in podnaslovom Zgodba iz 1960-ih še kako aktualen še desetletja po 1960-ih s svojim opisom in indirektno kritiko (sploh zahodnega) potrošništva. Delo hkrati postavlja tudi vprašanje, kaj je potrebno za srečno, zadovoljno življenje.
Sylvie in Jérôme, mlad par v začetku 20-ih, prav dobro vesta, s kakšnimi stvarmi bi se rada obkrožila in kako bi se oblačila, da bi bilo njuno življenje perfektno tako za njiju kot navzven. Hkrati sta tudi prepričana, da bi jima ta perfekcija prinesla srečo.
May 24, 2024
5/5. Perec skorajda matematično odmerjeno opisuje življenje mladega freelancerskega para v izkašljajočih letih francoskega golizma. Delata toliko in toliko, počivata malo manj toliko, krame pa si nabirata še več kot toliko preveč. Capljanja po odmerjenih uzancah velemestnega vrveža se naveličata, hrepenita po mogočem izzivu in izbereta učiteljevanje v odročnem in zakotnem alžirskem mestecu. Tam pa ni kafičev, kinodvoran, sprehodov po avenijah in ležanja na okenskih policah mansard...
August 2, 2025
Vincenzo Latronico je napisal, da je roman Popolnosti nastal kot poklon romanu Stvari Georgesa Pereca, ki je bil napisan leta 1965. Seveda sem po prebranih Popolnostih, ki so mi dale misliti, želela čimprej prebrati tudi Stvari.
Stvari se, tako kot Popolnosti, začnejo z opisom stanovanja. Majhnega stanovanja v Parizu, kjer živita Sylvie in Jérôme. Oba v zgodnjih dvajsetih, oba inteligentna, razgledana, družabna ... ki pa sta se zataknila v iskanju nečesa drugačnega, kot je življenje, ki se nekako pričakuje od njiju. Misel na stalno službo, pisarno, tablico z imenom na vratih ... in tako naprej do upokojitve se jima zdi grozna. Občasne zaposlitve jima ne prinašajo dovolj dohodka. V poskusu alternativnega življenja Sylvie sprejme službo v Tuniziji (Jérôme jo zavrne, ker se mu zdi premalo zanj!), a tudi tam nista zadovoljna.
Šestdeset let kasneje bi malo pikro s svojega gledišča rekla, da pač nista hotela odrasti in da sta bluzila sem in tja, dokler ju finančno stanje ni prisililo, da se uklonita konvencionalnemu življenju.
Slog v Stvareh je podoben kot v Popolnostih. Stvaren, distanciran, neoseben. Je pa zelo zanimiva primerjava dveh obdobij. Življenja mladih ljudi v sredini šestdesetih in petdeset let kasneje. Sylvie in Jérôme imata izhod v okviru sistema. Anna in Tom iz Popolnosti sta iz sistema izvržena. Najti morata alternativo. Smo res že prišli do konca meščanskega kapitalističnega stila življenja?
In - kakšen bi bil roman, ki bi obravnaval odraščanje v devetdesetih? Kakšne možnosti je imela moja generacija? O čem smo sanjali? Kaj smo dosegli? Kakšne izbire smo imeli? Ali smo mi tisti, ki smo zaje*ali naslednje generacije?
Stvari se, tako kot Popolnosti, začnejo z opisom stanovanja. Majhnega stanovanja v Parizu, kjer živita Sylvie in Jérôme. Oba v zgodnjih dvajsetih, oba inteligentna, razgledana, družabna ... ki pa sta se zataknila v iskanju nečesa drugačnega, kot je življenje, ki se nekako pričakuje od njiju. Misel na stalno službo, pisarno, tablico z imenom na vratih ... in tako naprej do upokojitve se jima zdi grozna. Občasne zaposlitve jima ne prinašajo dovolj dohodka. V poskusu alternativnega življenja Sylvie sprejme službo v Tuniziji (Jérôme jo zavrne, ker se mu zdi premalo zanj!), a tudi tam nista zadovoljna.
Šestdeset let kasneje bi malo pikro s svojega gledišča rekla, da pač nista hotela odrasti in da sta bluzila sem in tja, dokler ju finančno stanje ni prisililo, da se uklonita konvencionalnemu življenju.
Slog v Stvareh je podoben kot v Popolnostih. Stvaren, distanciran, neoseben. Je pa zelo zanimiva primerjava dveh obdobij. Življenja mladih ljudi v sredini šestdesetih in petdeset let kasneje. Sylvie in Jérôme imata izhod v okviru sistema. Anna in Tom iz Popolnosti sta iz sistema izvržena. Najti morata alternativo. Smo res že prišli do konca meščanskega kapitalističnega stila življenja?
In - kakšen bi bil roman, ki bi obravnaval odraščanje v devetdesetih? Kakšne možnosti je imela moja generacija? O čem smo sanjali? Kaj smo dosegli? Kakšne izbire smo imeli? Ali smo mi tisti, ki smo zaje*ali naslednje generacije?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews