Quel petit vélo à guidon chromé au fond de la cour?

In Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?, one of Georges Perec's earliest works but one of the last to be available in Spanish, the author offers two readings. The first is a traditional one, and chronicles the various failed strategies of a group of friends to try to prevent the conscription of the protagonist to fight in the Algerian War. The tale is a comic one in which the author portrays the antimilitaristic camaraderie of a group of eccentric characters in a bar. The second reading Perec proposes, in contrast, is considerably more experimental. An index of rhetorical devices details which one is used on each page, turning the book into a fascinating display of convoluted poetic license, from metonymy to catachresis. Readers are left to choose between a more traditional or an experimental reading or--better yet--to enjoy alternating between both.… (more)