I’m trying to read more of Perec’s work; I only had time to skim it and other works in the first module.
On the back cover is a quote from a review by Andrew Motion in The Observer. “Things: A story of the Sixties is the story of a young couple who want to enjoy life, but the only way they know how to do so is through ownership of ‘things’. It’s a rather superficial summary of the book, but sure what does Andrew Motion know!
One passage mentions’things’ surrounding their oasis, but inside was music which recalled a happy time in the past ….
“On a cool November evening, in the foreign city where nothing was theirs, where they were ill at ease, music took them backwards, allowed them to recover an almost forgotten feeling of complicity and shared living, as if, inside a tiny island – within the boundaries of the mat, the two sets of shelving, the record player, the circle of light confined by the cylindrical lampshade – they had managed to establish and to preserve a protected area which time and space could not touch. But outside, all around, was exile and the unknown.”
p.105, (Perec, Bellos and Leak, 2011)
For me this passage includes Perec’s (and my) themes; the infra-ordinary, time, something that evokes a past time, it’s not just about the couple and things, it’s about more, including their haven in strange surroundings.
Perec, G., Bellos, D. and Leak, A. (2011) Things : a story of the sixties. London: Vintage Books. Vintage Perec.
