In the middle

After what I realise is a huge pause I have decided to write a line or two here. I have been trying to move to www.miglenaminkova.com/blog and after spending lots of time deciding on the look of my new site/blog, I think I am pretty much there. So for some time I will try to update both of those spaces.

This week, I read Georges Perec’s ‘Species of Spaces‘ for my book club. I found it simply amusing, ranging from ambiguity, absurdity and bluntness, wildly extravagant at times, obvious and clever, and not pompous or at all pretentious. The writing style is very unconventional and appears to be intimate and full of disconnected anecdotes and side track stories, yet it remains somehow introvert. To me it seemed that Parec was not merely trying to describe the world starting from the page he was writing on in his bed,
in his apartment,
in the apartment building he was living in,
in the street,
in the neighbourhood,
in the town of Paris,
in the countryside around it,
in the country,
in Europe,
in the world,
and somewhere in the endless unattainable space (of possibly his blank piece of paper)

‘This is how space begins, with words only, signs traces on a blank page’(13))

Instead he made use of language in such a way that describes how one would go on about writing such a description. With this he provides direction and every detail for the reader to mentally do so.

‘…of the world , no longer as a journey having constantly to be remade, not as a race without an end, a challenge having constantly to be met, not as the one pretext for a despairing acquisitiveness, nor as the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors.’(79)

What stood out for me was the direct way in which he communicates with the reader, giving directions in order to engage them in his descriptive feats:

‘Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if that seems grotesque, or pointless or stupid. You still haven’t looked at anything, you have merely picked out what you have long ago picked out. Force yourself to see more flatly.’(50-51)

‘Carry on until the scene becomes improbable…’(53)

‘Don’t be too hasty in trying to find a definition…it is far too big and there is every chance of getting it wrong.First make an inventory of what you can see. List what you are sure of. Draw up elementary distinctions..’(60)

Those pedagogic and amusing interruptions fill in the whole piece of writing. They are specific for the context in which he uses them but ambiguous enough to be picked out individually. I found this technique to be very engaging and satisfying for creating a multiplicity of imaginary versions of every subject approached through this process. I am wondering if there is a children’s author using something similar?

Also, what is really interesting is that he uses different layout in order to simply illustrate the physicality of his writing. The way he uses it is similar to concrete poetry but without the flamboyancy of visuals. He simple uses dynamic layouts to emphasise the physical functions of words.

Georges Perec is a real virtuoso when it come to exploring the materiality of language with all of its elements, words. In ‘Notes on What I am Looking for’ he makes clear his interest in literature by putting them in four categories:’ social or how to look at the everyday’ , ‘autobiographical’, ‘lucid and relates to the liking of constraints and playing scales’ and ‘ fictional and the liking of stories and adventures’. This exciting pallet of interests makes him very close to my likings and personality. I particularly like his ideas relating to the ability of everyone too imagine.

‘There is nothing to stop us from imagining things that are nether towns nor countryside (nor suburbs), or Métro corridors that are at the same time public parks.’

It really is fascinating for me because I work in exactly the same way when it comes to illustration: listing objects and speculating over their relationships by posing the most absurd questions.

Georges Perec is a prominent member of OuLiPo (The Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle or Workshop for Potential Literature), a literary association formed in 1960s interested in the mathematical restrictions which could be posed on poetry. This association is at the heart of most playful and inventive use of language phenomenons such as palindromes, lipograms, pangrams, anagrams, isograms, acrostics, crosswords and many more.

‘…verbal play, verbal ploy, play on letters or what is commonly known as an’idea”(12)

Other quotes I found interesting are:

‘I write, I inhabit my sheet of paper, I invest it, I travel across it.’(11)

‘I write: to try meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive, to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.’(92)

‘Virtual space, a simple pretext for a nomenclature’(13)

‘I put a picture up on a wall. Then I forget there is a wall. I no longer know what there is behind this wall, I no longer know there is a wall, I no longer know this wall is a wall, I no longer know what a wall is. I no longer know that in my apartment there are walls, and that if there weren’t any walls, there would be no apartment. The wall is no longer what delimits and defines the place where I live, that which seperates it from the other places where other people live, it is nothing more than a support for the picture. But i also forget the picture, I no longer look at it, I no longer know how to look at it. I have put the picture on the wall so as to forget there was a wall, but in forgetting the wall, I forget the picture, too. There are pictures because there are walls. We have to be able to forget there are walls, and have found no better way to do that than pictures. Pictures efface walls. But walls kill pictures. So we need continually to be changing, either the wall or the picture, to be forever putting other pictures up on the walls, or else constantly moving the picture from one wall to another.’(39)

Sturrock, J. (1999) George Perec: Spieces of Spaces and Other Pieces. London: Penguin.