Customer Reviews

A Void. Georges Perec

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Six plus six plus four months ago, I bought a book: A Void. Originally, an author (G. P*r*c) first thought of A Void (or La Disparition) in 1967. In 1994, it was brought out from a country at a north Atlantic location in which Français is usually a normal way of articulating in writing and out loud and into a form of communication which most inhabitants of this country (US of A) know. This translator was a Mr. Adair. This book is a highly fantastic book. A linguistic madman who thought it up was choosing to put A Void on papyrus without a symbol in a form of communication, this missing fifth symbol. This author, or madman, was brilliant and did it without any faults, as did translator Adair. Why? I don't know. Author was crazy as a fox is crazy.
In this book, this Void, I found no lack of things for stimulation of my mind. In fact, Void is not a void at all. Pagination # 104:
`Twas upon a midnight tristful, I sat poring, wan and wistful
Through many a quant and curious listful of my consorts slain.
"Aha!" you shout out (not vocalizing too loudly, I wish), "that's a translation of an 18-stanza rhyming story by--"
But I cannot put to papyrus what you shout. I can, though, say that A Void lists author of rhyming as "Arthur Gordon Pym," thus naming a man from a work that this actual author did not finish. (Two or 3 of a group would say this man was too full of phobia at his own construction, à la an individual of physics, biology, and so on, in Mary's horror story about a monstrous guy known as Frank in a common-drinking-glass [I ask your pardon for this bad pun].) That rhyming is uno of many mind-stimulating "yummy things" you'll find in this book, which riffs on such works as Moby Dick, Milton's "Utopia" Lost, "Bill Bard's" Danish King Jr., and many classic puzzling/frightful works.
Only complaint: whodunit halts, stops at finish: author can't hold on to organizing thoughts to make whodunit work.
In conclusion: look at this book.

Won't try to keep up the non-e business here :) I have no idea why anyone finds this book tedious. It has a killer, loopy, murder mystery plot, but also manages to be a deeply felt meditation on absence and the way absences constitute our lives. Lots in common with Derrida, etc. The translation is a work of genius/insanity. I can't imagine a better job being done.

Perec lost his mother in the Holocaust. A Void is precisely about the difficulty of speaking in the absence of the most necessary thing. Not merely an intellectual tour de force -- although certainly that -- but one of the most subtle things ever written on grief.

In words that twist within a mighty bind, a dark void winds away to worlds known but not any I can show. In this book a constant hum runs just out of mind's ability to grasp. Although many draw nigh, no pilgrim grabs it's ring of brass. Will you?

A quandry; a missing part runs far within this book but is not shown. All talk, but say naught of this void. Oh longing, may this book fulfill. It has not any of a mainstay in our world. Try it on your own, The pain is worth it, so says I who has been through this hurt upon my own. It is truly amazing.

NOTE: Not to be included in this review!! This book is a murder mystery written entirely without the letter "e" (as is this feeble review). The translator is a true genius as much as the author. His rendering of Poe's "Raven" is by itself a literary achievement of significant note, not to mention the rest of the book. Although the language is necessarily tortured and convoluted, the story flows along brilliantly. Just as a character begins to get close to uncovering the reality of the missing letter, he is done away with. For those with the stamina, a truly worthwhile read

A Void by Georges Perec, is a book with a clever mystery aura surrounding it. This book centers around the disappearance of Anton Vowl, characterized as a insomniac with a love of writing. The story unfolds with Vowl suffering from insomnia, and sending postcards to his friends, which are interpreted as suicide letters. Amaury Conson is the first friend of Anton to begin to question his friend's sudden death. When he searches Vowl's now deserted apartment, he finds no trace of Vowl, nor any violence occurring in the area. All of Vowl's possessions are still present, including his car. Amaury suspects an abduction, so the search begins. Ottavio Ottaviani, a Corsican detective, joins the hunt, along with Aloysius Swan, his boss. Olivia Mavrokhordatos, who had an affair with Vowl at one point, also receives a postcard, and her clues alluding to a "zoo" takes her to the Paris Zoo, where she teams up with Amaury Conson. Hassan Ibn Abbou is a Moroccan "solicitor" with links to Vowl. But before he can spill any secrets he might be concealing, Abbou is stabbed in the back by a poisoned poniard. When the entire group, except for Ottavio and Swan, meet at Olivia's father-in-law's house, the mystery begins unravel. Olivia's father-in-law, Augustus, is killed mysteriously, and Squaw, their dedicated Iroquois servant, begins to piece together information, with the help of Anton's friends. Characters continue to die, and in almost Agatha Christie-like terror, the friends hope for some clue to lead them to the guilty.

George Perec(1936-1982), who wrote this book without the letter E in it, was a truly bizarre individual. He loved wordplay and parody, and was a expert on the game of GO. Perec loved to write things that were almost incredibly unique. One excellent example is his 5000 word-long "ça ne va pas san dire" which is the longest written palindrome ever created. However, when he wrote A Void, the fact that he concentrated on wordplay and the lack of E negatively influenced his writing style, especially the plot, which is confusing and almost nonexistent. First of all, many of Vowl's diary entries, which Perec intended to be puzzling conundrums for the reader, ended up being very tiresome. Gilbert Adair translated the original La Disaparition (Perec's French version), into readable English. The most amazing aspect of this accomplishment is that he managed to keep the lack of E through translation. However, the lack of E forced the story to be in the present tense, something that is unique to this book, yet somewhat annoying. The most damaging aspect of the translation is that the story is not very easy to read. The writing style is difficult to comprehend, and the sentence construction is, at times, bizarre. The eccentricity of Perec himself is reflected in the personality and character of Anton Vowl. The bizarre state of Vowl's mind is displayed when, through a complex trail of hints in the postcard's writing, he tries to subtly tell his friends of his fate. This trail is left unanswered at the end of the book, and serves as a mark of Vowl's (and Perec's) peculiarity.

This story is a good match for wordplay fanatics, and other people that share in Perec's interests. This is not however, the perfect "casual reading" book. The writing style (part due to translation) makes the story extremely difficult to follow. Even the biggest aficionados of wordplay and other novelties will be stymied at times by the multiple untrackable plotlines. Therefore, this book is interesting, and certainly a humorous read, but not deep enough in plot to truly be worth the effort for the casual reader.

"A void" is Gilbert Adairs translation of Georges Perec's "La Disparation". The classic story tells the story of the disappearance of Anton Vowl and the sense of loss that comes because of this. And this book is without a single E. The letter, that is. The story is originally french, and was written without the letter E. This translation is remarkable in that Adair has managed to retell the story with the same limitations imposed by Perec.

Half the fun of reading Perec's "A Void" is when you're about halfway through a sentence, or even a paragraph, and you know you've figured out what Perec is trying to say, and you can't imagine how in hell he's ever going to say it without using the letter "E". The other half of the fun is simply because this is an amazing book, with a plot and style that both echo the central conceit of the novel in an awe-inspiring fashion. I've not read the French original version, so I cannot comment of the fidelity of translation, but I thought that Adair's translation was immensely readable and enjoyable.

I just don't get the point of those who rated that book with only one or two stars. It can't be lower than five. Some of the reviewers wrote here that it is a tour de force to write a book without using the letter "E". But Perec do more than that: he tells us, page after page, that the "E" is missing. Moreover, he tells us that he is telling us that the "E" is missing. The book must not be read only to discover that missing "E", but for all the details that tell us of that void. Perec transforms other texts in lipograms: Poe, Melville, Hugo, Flaubert, etc. That book is simply unbelievable. I did'nt read the translation, but I must congratulate the translator who decided to do that translation. It is a more difficult tour de force than Perec did himself. Simply remarquable!

I have shown this book to many people and they don't think the idea of foresaking a vowel is that funny. "A little quirky", maybe, but basically a lot of people think the book is just a novelty. Au contrarie, the book rocks. What may be thought of as a silly little game in vocabulary and syntax is instead creativity and meaning pushed to the brink. The missing "e" can even be ignored; the book can be read without paying the least bit of attention to the irregular syntax: Instead the book is enhanced by it. (open up to a random page and give an OVERT clue "hey, is their anything odd about the vowels, fellow" - and you will be surprised how long it takes people to get it- it is such an unthinkable idea) Just because something is ostensibly absurd doesn't mean it is so. NOT a pretentious game, but a thoroughly worthwhile piece of literature. Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller was set out to lampoon dime-bag novels. A void, instead, has a deep-rooted meaning(s) that like any great work is open to interpretation. My own take on it is that the e is what is missing in humanity, what leads us to misconstrue each others intentions and what, consequently, leads to evil. The book should get more credit. (if Nabokov had written it, it would have sold millions)

Anton Vowl, the story's focus, is missing and his friends must unravel the mysteries of his diary. This may sound like a pretty average premise, but neither Vowl, his frends, or their creator are average themselves. One immidiately notices the strange feel this book has--it hasn't a single "e" anywhere in the text