Read A Void Online

Authors: Georges Perec

A Void

BOOK: A Void
6.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

G
E O R G E S
P
E R E C
( 1 9 3 6 - 1 9 8 2 )
was the author of
Life
A User's Manual.
His output is bewilderingly varied in

form and style: it was his aim to write every kind of work

that it is possible to write in the modern world without

doing the same thing twice. He composed crossword

puzzles and poetry, radio plays and a book on the game of

Go, essays and palindromes, autobiography
(W or The

Memory of Childhood)
and straight narrative, such as

Things,
his prize-winning first novel. After writing
La

Disparition (A Void),
he took all his unused e's and

devoted them to a short text,
Les Revenentes,
in which e is

the only vowel employed.

G
I L B E R T
A
D A I R lived and worked in France for more

than ten years. In Great Britain his reputation as a writer is

based on three novels,
The Holy Innocents, Love and Death

on Long Island
and
The Death of the Author,
as also on two

sequels to classics of children's literature,
Alice Through the

Needle's Eye
and
Peter Pan and the Only Children.
He is a

regular columnist on the
Sunday Times
in London and has

published three books on aspects of contemporary culture.

By the same author

in English translation

L I F E A U S E R ' S M A N U A L

W OR T H E M E M O R Y OF C H I L D H O O D

T H I N G S

A M A N A S L E E P

" 5 3 D A Y S "

Georges Perec

A VOID

Translated from the French

by Gilbert Adair

H A R V I L L

An Imprint of
HarperCollins Publishers

First published in France with the title
La Disparition

by Editions Denoel, Paris, 1969

First published in Great Britain in 1994

by Harvill

an imprint of HarperCollinsPaWtjim

77-85 Fulham Palace Road,

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

This translation has been published with the

financial support of the French Ministry of

Culture and Communications.

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

© Editions Denoel 1969

English translation © HarperCollinsPublishers 1994

A CIP catalogue record for this book

is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 00 271119 2 hardback

0 00 271118 4 paperback

Photoset in Linotron Galliard by

Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Redwood Books , Trowbridge, Wiltshire

C O N D I T I O N S O F S A L E

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,

in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior

permission of the publishers.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or

otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it

is published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

SUMMARY

I N T R O D U C T I O N
In which, as you will soon find out,

Damnation has its origin
vii

I A N T O N V O W L

1 Which at first calls to mind a probably familiar story of a

drunk man waking up with his brain in a whirl
3

2 In which luck, God's alias and alibi, plays a callous trick on a

suitor cast away on an island 12

3 Concluding with an immoral papacy's abolition and its

claimant's contrition
25

4 Which, notwithstanding a kind of McGujfin, has no ambition

to rival Hitchcock 37

6 Which, following a compilation of a polymath's random

jottings, will finish with a visit to a zoo
44

7
In which an unknown individual has it in for Moroccan

solicitors
57

8 In which you will find a word or two about a burial mound

that brought glory to Trajan
69

III D O U G L A S H A I G C L I F F O R D

9 In which an amazing thing occurs to an unwary basso profunda 81

10 Which will, I trust, gratify fanatics of Pindaric lyricism
93

11 Which will finish by arousing pity in a big shot
110

12 In which an umbilical ruby avails a bastard's anglicisation
122

13 On a fantastic charm that a choral work by Anton Dvorak

starts to cast on a billiard board
128

14 In which you will find a carp scornfully turning down a halva

fit for a king
140

I V O L G A M A V R O K H O R D A T O S

15 In which, untying a long string of fabrications and

falsifications, you will find out at last what sank that imposing

Titanic
155

16 Which will furnish a probationary boost to a not always

almighty dollar ($)
163

17 In which you will know what Vladimir Ilich thought of

Hollywood
170

18 For which many will no doubt claim that it adds much that

is crucial to our story
174

19 On running a risk by asking for a fish
farci 184

20 Which, notwithstanding two paragraphs full of brio and

inspiration, will draw to an ominous conclusion
196

V A M A U R Y C O N S O N

21 In which, following a pithy summary of our plot so far, a fourth

fatality will occur, that of a man who has had a significant

part to play in this book
207

22 In which you will find an old family custom obliging a brainy

youth to finish his
Gradus ad Parnassum
with six killings
221

23 In which an anxious sibling turns a hoard of cash found in a

drum to fairly satisfactory account 238

24 Which, starting with a downcast husband, will finish with a

furious sibling
253

V I A R T H U R W I L B U R G S A V O R G N A N

25 Which contains, in its last paragraph, a highly significant

blank
265

26 Which, as you must know by now, is this book's last
273

P O S T S C R I P T
On that ambition, so to say, which lit its

author's lamp
281

INTRODUCTION

In which, as you will soon find out, Damnation

has its origin

Today, by radio, and also on giant hoardings, a rabbi, an admiral

notorious for his links to Masonry, a trio of cardinals, a trio, too,

of insignificant politicians (bought and paid for by a rich and

corrupt Anglo-Canadian banking corporation), inform us all of

how our country now risks dying of starvation. A rumour, that's

my initial thought as I switch off my radio, a rumour or possibly

a hoax. Propaganda, I murmur anxiously — as though, just by

saying so, I might allay my doubts — typical politicians' propa-

ganda. But public opinion gradually absorbs it as a fact. Indi-

viduals start strutting around with stout clubs. "Food, glorious

food!" is a common cry (occasionally sung to Bart's music), with

ordinary hard-working folk harassing officials, both local and

national, and cursing capitalists and captains of industry. Cops

shrink from going out on night shift. In Macon a mob storms a

municipal building. In Rocadamour ruffians rob a hangar full of

foodstuffs, pillaging tons of tuna fish, milk and cocoa, as also a

vast quantity of corn - all of it, alas, totally unfit for human

consumption. Without fuss or ado, and naturally without any

sort of trial, an indignant crowd hangs 26 solicitors on a hastily

built scaffold in front of Nancy's law courts (this Nancy is a

town, not a woman) and ransacks a local journal, a disgusting

right-wing rag that is siding against it. Up and down this land

of ours looting has brought docks, shops and farms to a virtual

standstill.

Arabs, blacks and, as you might say, non-goyim fall victim to

vii

racist attacks, with pogroms forming in such outlying Parisian

suburbs as Drancy, Livry-Gargan, Saint-Paul, Villacoublay and

Clignancourt. And stray acts of brutality abound: an anonymous

tramp has his brains blown out just for a bit of moronic fun, and

a sacristan is callously spat upon — in public, too - whilst giving

absolution to a CRS man cut in half by a blow from a yataghan

(a Hungarian slicing tool, if you must know).

You'd kill your own kith and kin for a chunk of salami, your

cousin for a crust, your crony for a crouton and just about any-

body at all for a crumb.

On 6 April, from Saturday night until Sunday morning, 25

Molotov cocktails go off around town. Pilots bomb Orly airport.

Paris's most familiar landmarks burn down, and its inhabitants

look on in horror at a still blazing Alhambra, an
Institut
that is

nothing but a sad, smoking ruin, a Saint-Louis Hospital with all

its windows alight and gaily flaming away. From Montsouris to

Nation not a wall is intact.

Opposition MPs add insult to injury by baiting a now almost

suicidal ruling party, which, though obviously hurt by such an

affront to its dignity, has a fair stab at smoothing things out. But

whilst assassins start liquidating a handful of junior Quai d'Orsay

officials (23, or so it's said), a Dutch diplomat caught filching an

anchovy from a tub of fish is soon put paid to by an impromptu

stoning. And whilst an odiously smug and arrogant viscount in

shocking pink spats
(sic)
is laid into by Wagram's hoi polloi until

his skin is of a similarly shocking colour (his only fault, it turns

out, was to qualify starvation, to a dying man who had put his

hand out for a coin, as just too, too boring for words), in Raspail

a tall, blond Scandinavian, of actual Viking stock, riding a palo-

mino with blood pouring down its shanks and brandishing aloft

a long bow, starts firing arrows off at any local not to his liking.

A poor, starving, half-mad corporal purloins a bazooka and

mows down his battalion, commandant and all; and, on his

instant promotion to admiral by public acclaim, is just as instandy

BOOK: A Void
6.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

A Jest of God by Margaret Laurence
Box Girl by Lilibet Snellings
A Nice Fling is Hard to Find by Mlynowski, Sarah
My Hope Next Door by Tammy L. Gray
The Amazing Absorbing Boy by Rabindranath Maharaj