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Life: A User's Manual (Verba Mundi) 2nd Edition

by
Georges Perec (Author)
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Georges Perec (Author),
David Bellos (Translator)
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David Bellos (Translator)
4.8 out of 5 stars 47 customer reviews
ISBN-13: 978-1567923735
ISBN-10: 1567923739
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Frequently Bought Together

  • Life: A User's Manual (Verba Mundi)
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  • Species of Spaces and Other Pieces (Penguin Classics)
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  • An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
Total price: $39.38
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Product Details

  • Series: Verba Mundi (Book 18)
  • Paperback: 661 pages
  • Publisher: David R Godine; 2nd edition (2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1567923739
  • ISBN-13: 978-1567923735
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.5 x 8.4 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #79,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA spellbinding masterpiece of experimental fiction.
By Zeldock on October 2, 2001
Format: Paperback
If you read the first few pages of this book after seeing all the glowing reviews on Amazon, you may wonder what we are so excited about. However, you will be rewarded if you persevere. In an ice-cold literary voice, Perec systematically describes the inhabitants and contents of a Paris apartment building. His style is at first totally uninvolving, yet somehow, amazingly, his monotonous descriptions come together like the tiles of a mosaic (or, to use Perec's image, the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle) to create a living, exciting picture. Even if you know nothing about the philosophical and aesthetic theories that gave this book its structure, you will find it enthralling.
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5.0 out of 5 starsSeat Yourself At The Puzzle...
By Martin Dawson on June 29, 2003
Format: Paperback
Perec would properly be regarded as an experimentalist and this novel, like his others, was written under self-imposed constraints.
The novel takes as its plan a block of flats in a Parisian suburb, a 10 x 10 grid, over which the narrator must proceed by way of the moves of the Knight in chess, never landing on the same flat twice(this, like other formalities, were allowed to be bent but let's not get too complicated...) with a whole system for information, knowledge and learning to be allocated to each chapter.
'So far, so what' might be the natural response to this were it not for the majesty of the finished novel.
Read in translation the writing is formal yet intimate and seems to proceed at its own leisurely pace as it moves through the block of flats, through life. Numerous 'Tales' are recounted as the novel progresses, each rich in feeling and poignancy though sometimes disturbing, the key of which, indeed the key to the novel, is 'The Tale of the Man who painted watercolours and had puzzles made out of them'. To go into detail would spoil the effect for other readers but this is about life, about a plan for life and ultimately a metaphor for life. And the making of this book.
I have to confess to a love for French literature generally. It seems possible to trace an organic progression and tradition (the blanket phrase that readily comes to mind is 'intellectual pessimism'...)through its history which is then disrupted every once in a while by an individual who rebels against that tradition (Rimbaud) or subverts it (Mallarme or Aragon). Perec, arguably, both is and is not of this tradition.
He is however, in the wider tradition of great literature. And seems to recognise this. 'Life...Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsFor anyone who might feel slightly intimidated, A letter of welcome
By Guttersnipe Das on June 4, 2014
Format: Paperback
Of course Perec’s masterpiece needs no further praise, but I thought I might write a “letter of welcome” for anyone approaching the book for the first time, for those who are curious and perhaps wary. It is, after all, hundreds of pages of fine print. The labels “experimental” and “postmodern” can be off-putting, as they have often been applied to work that is portentous or opaque or overly self-involved. How could a book with a title like “LIFE A User’s Manual” not be a little intimidating? Anyway, that is how I felt. This note is for others who might feel the same way.

Several people I respect very much loved this book, and it sounded like the sort of thing that I would like, so I sat down to it with high expectations, read thirty pages and said, “Huh?” It seemed so dry -- twenty percent story, twenty percent goofball theory, sixty percent catalog. Dry as dust, I thought. Just wasn’t making it into my head.

Assuming this to be simply my problem, I started again from page one, and the second time was a little better, though I wasn’t really hooked until Chapter Thirteen and the story of the acrobat who refused to come down. From then on I read in a slow and patient rapture, like a man unexpectedly caught in an ecstatic trance while cruising the subterranean stacks of a library.

In other words, be a little patient with Perec and with yourself. This is a book unlike any other and it may take a little while to get the hang of reading it. If all else fails: proceed directly to Chapter Thirteen!

I found that it helped a great deal to take notes. I got myself a little notebook and filled it with the names of characters, vocabulary I didn’t know, bizarre theories as well as sentences I loved and copied out.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsA whole panoramic view of life as it is -and can be
By Guillermo Maynez on August 9, 2004
Format: Paperback
Although this is certainly an experimental novel, it is absolutely readable and fun. The layout is supposed to be taken from chess, with a knight jumping up on some squares which represent the appartments on the building map. Frankly, although ingenious, the scheme is not all that important to me. What truly fascinated me were the stories themselves, the full development of characters, situations, histories and sceneries. In every chapter, Perec gives us an introduction about how the appartment / room looks like. The descriptions may be long sometimes, but they are essential to the whole point of the book: to bring to life real people living in comprehensible, complete surroundings, and to make these easy to visualize. Some of the descriptions, in particular Mme. Moreau's dining room, are simply beautiful and innovative.

The book was completed in 1978 and the action of the stories ranges from mid-XIX Century until June 23, 1975. The final chapter, which gives us a photograph of what each inhabitant is doing at that precise moment (8 pm), is also very beautiful and moving. The book projects a humanity so rich and vivid, hard to find in most fiction. The stories intertwine while being totally independent, and the cast of characters is wide-ranging and believable even in the most outrageous ones.

The central story, which forms the backbone of the book, is about a rich young man, Bartlebooth, a typically eccentric Englishman who decides to devote his life to a single, useless, morally neutral and highly aesthetical project: along with his faithful servant Smautf, he will visit 500 seaports to paint acquarelles of them, and every 15 days he will send the pictures to Winckler, an artisan also residing in the building.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsall the pain but also the joy of life itself

This is a very complex book.I'l need to read it again some day in the future because I'm not sure I got the whole multitude of stories events persons and dark meanings of the book... Read more

Published 6 months ago by nora leibovici
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very good book

Published 18 months ago by Marina Heck
5.0 out of 5 starsIt is a challenge and a joy to read

I bought this as a gift for one of my student's parents who has a very astute and enquiring mind. I had read the book in Comp Lit grad school and thought (and still think) it is... Read more

Published 21 months ago by Dinesen
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent Qualities Might be an Understatement

I have only sampled the book so far, but the content I read was very good. It was a section about an art collector who was fooled by con artists. Read more

Published on December 14, 2014 by N. Coppedge
5.0 out of 5 starsNot easily described, but worth every minute

It takes no courage to 5-star a book with this reputation. I stumbled on it in a pile of books two very literarily apt friends were giving away in an annual personal library... Read more

Published on August 25, 2014 by Cecil Bothwell
3.0 out of 5 starsLife is a puzzle

A manual of a machine usually begins with the description of the parts and then shows how the machine works. Perec does more or less the same in this book. Read more

Published on October 30, 2013 by Marc L
5.0 out of 5 starsNothing to nothing is very much something.

Many people misinterpret nihilism as only a negative or cynical approach to life and to the cosmos. But with "Life: A User's Manual" (LAUM) I sense that Georges Perec is... Read more

Published on August 27, 2013 by Brian Lehman
5.0 out of 5 starsOne of the truly unique works of literature.

Visionary work. Obsessive beatifully detailed but with an overarching sense of narrative. Hard to pull off but Perec did so with style and wit. Read more

Published on May 31, 2013 by Stephen
3.0 out of 5 starsA Tiresome Collection of Minutia; Didn't Work For Me

I ordered this novel from Amazon by virtue of its near unanimous five star review status. After having read the work in its entirety, I must admit to being somewhat mystified by... Read more

Published on January 28, 2013 by Steven M. Anthony
5.0 out of 5 starsa nice book

I hope there could be more books published in the kindle edition about Georges Perec's works. I'm looking forward to it!

Published on December 25, 2012 by Wei-Hsun Chen

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