I Remember

I remember

and let me just stop myself right there. It's much too easy to write gag reviews of Perec, to adopt the trick of any particular book and write the review the same way; review A Void without using the letter E, etc. It's precious and clever and just don't. Because Perec is so much more than just a clown and he deserves more respect than that.

I Remember, then, is a series of memories, written exactly like that:

I remember Xavier Cugat.

I remember the 121.

I remember only two or three of the seven dwarves; Grumpy, Dopey, Doc.

...and so on and so on, 479 of them, summing up Perec's life from age 10 to roughly age 25 (though some memories, like the Baader Meinhof gang or Sharon Tate, were obviously more recent when he wrote them down show more in the mid-70s). Each memory is presented as just a flash, a simple, clear statement, huge events like the liberation of France or insignificant details like the name of a kind of candy get equal treatment. Some are completely mysterious 60 years later, at least without googling them. Some are memories of things he doesn't remember. Some are objectively wrong. Some... or rather many, to the surprise of no one who's read Perec, are puns of varying degrees of obscenity, or mnemonic devices. Some are unanswered questions.

As often with Perec, the simple act of putting all of these together is part of what makes it any more than just a collection of nonsense sentences. Those two words at the beginning of each sentence, "I remember", tells us: there's a story behind all of these. They all shape a person. They all clutter everyone's subconscious. 479 hooks baited with nothing more than our curiousity to want to know more, and having to substitute our own memories for his unspoken ones. show less

Esta fue la primera novela escrita por Perec, y en ella todavía no se aprecia la experimentación de sus obras posteriores, como 'Vida: instrucciones de uso', su obra magna. Como reza el título, a lo largo de la novela, se nos van enumerando las cosas, los objetos, que poseen y anhelan poseer los protagonistas, Jérôme y Sylvie, dos jóvenes parisinos de clase media que andan entre la pobreza y la riqueza, deseando a toda costa esta última. Pero quieren llegar a burgueses sin trabajar en serio. Desean butacas, alfombras, estanterías, libros, cuadros de lujo sin renunciar a la libertad que les proporciona sus pequeños trabajos en publicidad, realizando encuestas y entrevistas de mercado; es decir, trabajando lo mínimo show more imprescindible para poder vivir y disponer del mayor tiempo libre posible.

'Las cosas', publicada en la década de los sesenta, es una crítica feroz de la sociedad de consumo, en la que prima el poseer como símbolo de riqueza e imagen de bienestar. Sin duda se trata de un visión del futuro que se nos avecinaba, donde nunca nos conformamos con lo que tenemos porque siempre hay algo que desearemos aún más. show less

Un formidable texte de perec, une ode à la nostalgie, qui marche très bien. C'est très chouette de se plonger dedans.

Amusant

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Perec-Je-me-souviens/17313