Status
Available
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Publication
Amsterdam De Arbeiderspers 2014
User reviews
LibraryThing member PZR
It's Georges Perec - author of my very favourite book of all time - so it has to be good, doesn't it? And indeed it is.
I'd read about this novel - Perec's second, but never published in his lifetime - in David Bellos' monumental biography of Perec, so when it finally turned up in print I had to
By coincidence, I had just read Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters", also a contemplation of a single portrait and artistic genius in which nothing much happens, and the two worked well as a piece.
I'd read about this novel - Perec's second, but never published in his lifetime - in David Bellos' monumental biography of Perec, so when it finally turned up in print I had to
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have it. It's taken me a couple of years to get around to reading it. A curious work in two parts (the second is a retelling of the first), it features Gaspard Winckler, also the name of one of the main characters in "Life a User's Manual", though it's not clear if they're one and the same. It concerns a frustrated forger who murders his paymaster. Reputed to be difficult because it's told in the first,second and third persons, I didn't find it so at all. I'm not at risk of giving any plot spoilers because there isn't much of a plot, to be honest. But that doesn't matter. It's an entertaining meditation on creativity and genius, written with Perec's characteristic wit.By coincidence, I had just read Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters", also a contemplation of a single portrait and artistic genius in which nothing much happens, and the two worked well as a piece.
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LibraryThing member bodachliath
A fascinating unpublished early novella by the writer more famous for Life: A User's Manual. It tells the story of Gaspard Winckler, an art forger and his obsession with a failed attempt to create an original painting to match the renaissance master Antonello's Condottiere, better known in English
Like all of Perec's work the language is playful and entertaining, which creates obvious challenges for the translator.
The translation is by David Bellos, who was not only the translator of the best known English versions of much of Perec's other work, but also the writer of a brilliant book on the art of translation, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything. Bellos had a hand in unearthing the manuscript of this book while researching a biography of Perec, and has added an introduction to this version.
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as Portrait of a Man. Winckler tells his story first as a stream of consciousness narration and then by answering questions, as a form of cathartic confession after murdering his patron. It is difficult not to read this at least partially as a metaphor for the novelist's own struggle to create his first work, but also a meditation on the nature of creativity and originality in the arts. Like all of Perec's work the language is playful and entertaining, which creates obvious challenges for the translator.
The translation is by David Bellos, who was not only the translator of the best known English versions of much of Perec's other work, but also the writer of a brilliant book on the art of translation, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything. Bellos had a hand in unearthing the manuscript of this book while researching a biography of Perec, and has added an introduction to this version.
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Awards
Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation (Commended — 2015)
Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
2012
Physical description
156 p.; 20 cm
ISBN
9789029589710