Life instruction manual

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Life Instructions for Use ( La Vie mode d'emploi ) is a novel by the writer Georges Perec , which is regarded as a masterpiece and published in France in 1978 and in German in 1982, translated by Eugen Helmlé .

General

The very extensive novel consists of six parts, the chapters of which are numbered from 1 to 99. The text is preceded by the following quote from the novel Michel Strogoff by Jules Verne : "Look with both eyes, look". This is followed by an introduction and the text of the novel is followed by an epilogue. An appendix, consisting of a person and subject index, the directory: "Chronological clues", the directory: "Memory of some of the stories told in this work", a post-scriptum and a table of contents concludes the book, which in the German edition Includes 894 pages.

On the surface, the 99 chapters describe a house, its rooms, its current and former residents and parts of their life stories at a fictional Paris address, Rue Simon-Crubellier 11. The chapters are usually only a few pages long and each offer partial descriptions of the various rooms of the Apartments and their residents, the staircase or the basement. The chapters are arranged to give a picture of the knight problem in chess. The interdependencies of the residents are also shown.

content

Although it is said of this novel, which is also called “Novels” in the subtitle, that it can be read either in the traditional way from beginning to end, but also starting from any point, there is, paradoxically, one Kind of center of the action.

In this center stands the very wealthy resident, the Englishman Bartlebooth with a life plan that spans over 50 years. He used the first ten of them to learn the art of watercolor painting from the painter and roommate Valène. Afterwards, Bartlebooth embarks on a 20-year trip around the world prepared by his loyal butler Smautf, who also accompanies him. During this time he painted 500 watercolors of harbor views. After completion, the watercolors are sent to Rue Simon-Crubellier 11 in Paris, where they are mounted on wood by Gaspard Winckler and processed into intricate puzzles. Back from his journey, Bartlebooth will put the puzzles back together. Each completed puzzle is then put together again by another roommate, Georges Morellet, using a special adhesive solution so that the wood can be removed and the original watercolor is created again. The watercolor is then returned to its port of origin, where it is immersed in sea water exactly 20 years after the day it was created and thus wiped out. All that remains in the paper are barely visible traces left by the division and joining, and the paper is sent back to Bartlebooth. His intention to leave no trace of 50 years of effort is thwarted by the fact that Winckler's puzzles become increasingly difficult and that Bartlebooth sees worse and worse with increasing age, until he finally goes blind. When Bartlebooth died on June 23, 1975, he was 16 months behind schedule. He dies completing the 439th puzzle, a W-shaped puzzle piece in his hand, with the only missing piece of the puzzle drawing the "almost perfect silhouette of an X".

expenditure

French

  • La Vie mode d'emploi. Romans (later edition: partly with a comma between Vie and mode ) Hachette, Paris 1978 ISBN 2-01-005490-3 ; and more often (in total 7 editions up to 2004) Most recent: France loisirs, Paris 2004 ISBN 2-7441-7494-7 .
    • Cahier des Charges de La Vie mode d'emploi Ed. Hans Hartje u. a. (French) CNRS Editions, 2003: ISBN 2-271-05087-1 & Zulma, Paris 1995: ISBN 2-84304-205-4 & 2003: ISBN 2-909031-32-2 , (Perecs lists in which he determined which details occur systematically in the individual rooms) see also under web links.
  • La vie mode d'emploi. Parcours puzzle (theater performance in French) Mise en scène de Michaël Lonsdale; texts de G. Pérec; adaptation de René Farabet ; dramaturgy de René Farabet; lumières de Paul de Larminat; avec Jean Bollery, René Farabet, Bernadette Le Saché. 42e Festival d'Avignon, 1988

German

  • Life instruction manual. 1st edition 1982, Zweiausendeins , ISBN 3-86150-911-3 to 2009: 7 editions. 7th edition as paperback, ISBN 978-3-86150-911-0 .
    • The 4th edition (2002) contains a puzzle (an idea originating from Perec) and a booklet by the translator, with additional materials, etc. a. Excerpts from a conversation Perecs with Gabriel Simony about DLG in German
  • The life. Instructions for use. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-499-40078-2 .

Other

  • Dutch: Het leven een gebruiksaanwijzing. Translated by Edu Berger. De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam 2006 (Series: Modern Klassiek)
  • English: Life. A User's Manual. (Fictions.) Translated by David Bellos , several editions between 1985 and 2000

Further use of motifs from DLG

  • [1] Multimedia project about the fictional rue Simon-Crubellier , in which the house is located. The project wants to approach the question: Can something unreal become real by looking for it? With the help of Marcel Bénabou from Oulipo .
  • Andreas Winterer : Cosmo Pollite Schwarten, Kühbach 2000 ISBN 3-929303-15-9 , names a chapter in his pseudo-crime thriller book: “Planet Cellulite, Rue Simon-Crubellier No. 11 ". The puzzle is getting bigger and bigger, so to speak.

See also

literature

  • Renate Overbeck: Georges Perec: "The life instruction manual." The novel as a puzzle (= exemplary series literature and philosophy. 13). Sonnenberg, Annweiler 2003, ISBN 3-933264-22-7 (the book explains some of the references, allusions and principles of the book).
  • Katja Rech-Pietschke: The semiology of the transparent building. Space, time, death in Lesage , Zola , Butor and Perec (= Saarbrücker work on Romance studies. 9). Dissertation University of Saarbrücken. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-631-49306-1 .
  • David Gascoigne: The games of fiction. G. Perec and modern French ludic narrative (= Modern French identities. 45). Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-03910-697-4 .
  • Anita Miller: Georges Perec. Between anamnesis and structure (= treatises on language and literature. 92). Dissertation University of Stuttgart 1995. Romanistischer Verlag, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-86143-046-0 .

Web links

  • As a game: life. Instructions for use - A multimedia interpretation of the novels by GP shows an excerpt from Perec's oeuvre, abstracted for an interactive game. The work was created in the "Visual Communication" course in the design department of the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences.
  • Lists An example of the lists of terms used according to Perecs Cahier des charges (here: p. 23).
  • Some notes and advice on rules and construction.

Remarks

  1. ↑ Further lists appear when the last number is changed in the URL (numbers 1 to 99 are possible, according to the book chapters). Overbeck interprets this list in parts, cf. her example (lit.), pp. 26-28