Books by Georges Perec
“A lot of books are described as ‘post-modern’, but I think this is actually a deconstructed text. Perec was going to Australia to teach for 53 days, which he realized was how long it took Stendhal to write Charterhouse of Parma. So he decides he’s going to write a novel in 53 days, why not?! The book then incorporates a lot of stuff from his time in Australia: characters named after the pizza shop he goes to; the Commandos who descend on one scene are named after New South Wales train stations. But he’s also writing a murder mystery about a stolen book, which is itself a murder mystery. Perec, at one stage, is narrating the story of the narrator who’s narrating the plot of the book, which has a novel in it, the plot of which he’s narrating to us. There are boxes inside boxes.” Read more...
The best books on Deconstruction
Peter Salmon, Philosopher
La Vie mode d’emploi (Life A User’s Manual)
by Georges Perec
Some people love it for its cleverness but, behind the cleverness, there is something more, something not as simple as a psychology or a character, but something deeply human, deeply reflective of the human condition. Perec didn’t believe you could really get to know a person better than by looking at the details – what they put on their mantelpiece…
Interviews where books by Georges Perec were recommended
The Greatest French Novels, recommended by David Bellos
Booker Prize-winning translator David Bellos says Les Misérables is the greatest novel of all time. When it came out, “it was an event bigger than the launch of Titanic and Avatar put together.” He picks the five greatest French novels.
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1
Of Grammatology
by Jacques Derrida & translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak -
2
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
by Mikhail Bakhtin & translated by Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson -
3
Jacques Derrida Circumfession
by Geoffrey Bennington & Jacques Derrida -
4
The Newly Born Woman
by Catherine Clément, Hélène Cixous & translated by Betsy Wing -
5
"53 Days"
by Georges Perec, translated by David Bellos
The best books on Deconstruction, recommended by Peter Salmon
The best books on Deconstruction, recommended by Peter Salmon
For the general reader deconstruction has a bad reputation. It is seen as over-complicating, arcane and wilfully obscure—but as its founding genius Jacques Derrida pointed out, “If things were simple, word would have gotten around.” Here Peter Salmon, author of an excellent new biography of Derrida, chooses five books to get you started on the text and everything inside it.
