Georges Perec
You know how you only need one glance at some people to
conclude that they’re stark raving bonkers?
This is Georges Perec. 100% barking bananas would be the
instant diagnosis.
This is Georges Perec with a cat. Probably his cat, judging
by how well they seem to be acquainted and getting along, but possibly someone
else’s cat. A cat that likes mad curly hair and beards.
He wrote one of the best novels I’ve read, Life A User’s
Manual (La Vie mode d’emploi). It’s big on wit and humour, imagination and
surprises. It’s huge, complexly and elegantly structured, and widely acclaimed
by all those folk who know a load more than me about these things.
He also wrote a novel without using the letter ‘e’.
Not this way: Th novl I’m writing dos not hav th lttr ‘ ‘ in
it.
But like this: My publication is without a solitary ‘e’ in
it, a difficult thing to do.
Try it. Try to tweet without one of the 140 allowed
characters being an ‘e’. Tricky, isn’t it? Anyway, he did it and it was
published. So he then wrote another with only the only vowel used, the ‘e’. No
‘a’s, no ‘i's, ‘o’s or ‘u’s. That’s a near-impossible constraint, I’d imagine.
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