Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collections
Publication
Amsterdam De Arbeiderspers cop. 1991
User reviews
LibraryThing member kidzdoc
[W, or The Memory of Childhood] is a short but powerful and disturbing novel which consists of alternating chapters in two parts. In the first part, the autobiographical chapters describe his first few years of life. However, he cannot remember much of his childhood, and we are given fragments that
In the second part of the book, the autobiographical chapters consist of Perec's life with his aunt and uncle in southeastern France during the war. Once again, the narrator's memory is hazy, but his recall of events sharpens as the years progress. The fictional chapters consist of a story of what first appears to be an Olympic utopia on the island of W, located in Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago near the tip of South America. The setting seems to be idyllic initially, with friendly competition between the athletes of the four towns on the island. However, with each subsequent chapter another layer is peeled away to reveal a more sinister society, as losing athletes are starved, tortured and even killed, and fertile women are chased by the athletes and allowed to be raped by the winners. The officials overseeing the games encourage the increasingly violent and lawless behavior, and the villagers passively and unquestioningly accept what their lives have become.
The reader eventually realizes what the island is meant to portray, and the interrelationship between the alternating autobiographical and fictional chapters becomes apparent. I highly recommend this novel, but it is not one to be read at bedtime!
Show More
are amended and corrected, based on what he is told by the aunt and uncle who adopted him and other relatives. His parents are almost ghostlike figures in this narrative, and the reader wonders if they truly did exist. The fictional chapters are the account of a French soldier who deserts his post and lives in a small German town after receiving a new name and identity by conscientious objectors. He receives a mysterious letter one day, and the man who sends him the letter provides him with information about his namesake, a boy who is missing after a boating accident near Tierra del Fuego. The mysterious man encourages him to conduct a search for his namesake.In the second part of the book, the autobiographical chapters consist of Perec's life with his aunt and uncle in southeastern France during the war. Once again, the narrator's memory is hazy, but his recall of events sharpens as the years progress. The fictional chapters consist of a story of what first appears to be an Olympic utopia on the island of W, located in Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago near the tip of South America. The setting seems to be idyllic initially, with friendly competition between the athletes of the four towns on the island. However, with each subsequent chapter another layer is peeled away to reveal a more sinister society, as losing athletes are starved, tortured and even killed, and fertile women are chased by the athletes and allowed to be raped by the winners. The officials overseeing the games encourage the increasingly violent and lawless behavior, and the villagers passively and unquestioningly accept what their lives have become.
The reader eventually realizes what the island is meant to portray, and the interrelationship between the alternating autobiographical and fictional chapters becomes apparent. I highly recommend this novel, but it is not one to be read at bedtime!
Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
Perec explores his memories of childhood and his reaction to the loss of his parents, both Jewish immigrants from Poland, during World War II. His father died in 1940 from wounds he received fighting in the French army; his mother was deported by the Nazis in early 1944 and is presumed to have been
The book has two alternating and apparently independent narratives. The even-numbered chapters form a fairly conventional memoir narrative, in which Perec examines memories, photographs, and texts he has written about himself earlier and tries to resolve them with what he can learn from family members and others who were around at the time. In many cases he finds that his memories don't square with the facts: he has appropriated to himself interesting or significant events that actually happened to other people, or he has shifted things around in time.
Meanwhile, the odd-numbered chapters, printed in italics, tell the (imaginary) story of a deserter from a French colonial war, now living in Germany under the false name Gaspard Winckler, who is asked to go to the island of W in Tierra del Fuego in search of the real Gaspard Winckler, missing after a shipwreck. As the narrator tells us more and more about W, we start to realise what a strange and disturbing place it is, in which the whole of life is centred around meaningless sporting competitions conducted under an arbitrary, changeable and undisclosed code of rules. Eventually we work outthat it is a coded, indirect way into exploring the distorted moral universe of the Nazi concentration camps. Perec doesn't trust himself, or doesn't feel entitled, to write directly about what his mother and other victims must have experienced, and he works his way in by this unexpected and very effective side-entrance. Perec obviously meant us to come to a clear realisation of how the two halves of the book fit together only in the last chapters, but my copy had helpfully been annotated all the way through by an earlier reader. It didn't really spoil it.
Show More
murdered at Auschwitz. Perec was evacuated from Paris to the Dauphiné by the Red Cross in 1942, where he attended a Catholic boarding school and later went to live with relatives. The book has two alternating and apparently independent narratives. The even-numbered chapters form a fairly conventional memoir narrative, in which Perec examines memories, photographs, and texts he has written about himself earlier and tries to resolve them with what he can learn from family members and others who were around at the time. In many cases he finds that his memories don't square with the facts: he has appropriated to himself interesting or significant events that actually happened to other people, or he has shifted things around in time.
Meanwhile, the odd-numbered chapters, printed in italics, tell the (imaginary) story of a deserter from a French colonial war, now living in Germany under the false name Gaspard Winckler, who is asked to go to the island of W in Tierra del Fuego in search of the real Gaspard Winckler, missing after a shipwreck. As the narrator tells us more and more about W, we start to realise what a strange and disturbing place it is, in which the whole of life is centred around meaningless sporting competitions conducted under an arbitrary, changeable and undisclosed code of rules. Eventually we work out
Show Less
Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
1975
Physical description
194 p.; 19 cm
ISBN
9029533579 / 9789029533577