At the BNF, Perec's Many Obsessions Laid Out Room by Room
A new exhibition in Paris traces the writer of "Les Choses" through his recurring preoccupations, visited for Le Monde by novelist Thomas Clerc. A companion art book reveals a lesser-known side of Perec: his drawings.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France has opened "Georges Perec modes d'emploi," an exhibition devoted to the author of "Les Choses" and "La Vie mode d'emploi," according to Le Monde. The paper describes a path through the show that skillfully interweaves Perec's many obsessions, and sent writer Thomas Clerc to walk it for readers.
Clerc, a novelist himself, serves as guide through the rooms, though the available account does not detail which objects, manuscripts or rooms the tour covers, nor the exhibition's dates or curators.
A book of drawings, inks and gouaches
Alongside the exhibition, Le Monde reports on a newly published illustrated book, "Dessins, encres & gouaches," gathering previously unseen and unexpected visual works by Perec. The volume is presented by Matthieu Rémy, who recalls that Perec once confided: "J'ai longtemps voulu être peintre" ("I long wanted to be a painter"), according to the paper.
Le Monde calls it a handsome book paying tribute to the breadth of Perec's talents beyond his fiction and constrained writing experiments, though the summary does not specify the book's publisher, page count or release date.
Together, the exhibition and the book point to a side of Perec less familiar to readers who know him chiefly through his novels and his Oulipian wordplay: a writer who, by his own account, once wanted to be a painter.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.