This is a journal paper by Walsh, Meeka. Border Crossings; Winnipeg Vol. 30, Iss. 2, (Jun-Aug 2011): 12-13. Walsh reported that the absence of Perec’s father to WWII and death in 1940 and death of his mother in1943 in Auschwitz left a void or a space in his life and that, “He saw neither of them again, and he wrote that his particular memories- the house where he might have been born, what he refers to as the attic of his childhood filled with memories- these places didn’t exist. This void that should have been inhabited by memory caused him to interrogate space. “Space,” he wrote, “is a doubt: I have constantly to mark it, designate it. It’s never mine, never given to me, I have to conquer it.” He wrote that his spaces are fragile and he feared time would wear them away. “Nothing will any longer resemble what was, my memories will betray me, oblivion will infíltrate my memory.” “
I wonder if this was the reason he, Perec, began to observe the daily life around Paris, and the mundane things he saw there? (I’ve ordered Perec’s book “Species of Spaces”.) It echoes my theme of the wallet, I think, and also my annual visit to Berlin, in some ways. In Berlin I stay with a friend. He lived in the apartment below me in the 80s and early 90s. He still lives there. The apartment has only minimally changed since then. I walk around the local streets, every time looking for changes and similarities. Am I obsessed? I go to my rugby club in Berlin at the time they hold a tournament and check if my old friends are alive and if I still recognise them, and they me.
