Things: A Story of the Sixties / A Man Asleep (Verba Mundi) (Verba Mundi (Paperback)) - Softcover

Perec, Georges

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567921574 ISBN 13: 9781567921571

Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher Inc, 2002

Synopsis

With the American publication of Life, a User's Manual in 1987, Georges Perec was immediately recognized in the U.S. as one of this century's most innovative writers. Now Godine is pleased to issue two of his most powerful novels in one volume: Things, in an authoritative new translation, and A Man Asleep, making its first English appearance. Both provoked strong reactions when they first appeared in the 1960s; both which speak with disquieting immediacy to the conscience of today's readers. In each tale Perec subtly probes our obsession with society's trappings-the seductive mass of things that crams our lives, masquerading as stability and meaning. Jerome and Sylvie, the young, upwardly mobile couple in Things, lust for the good life. "They wanted life's enjoyment, but all around them enjoyment was equated with ownership." Surrounded by Paris's tantalizing exclusive boutiques, they exist in a paralyzing vacuum of frustration, caught between the fantasy of "the film they would have liked to live" and the reality of life's daily mundanities. In direct contrast with Jerome and Sylvie's cravings, the nameless student in A Man Asleep attempts to purify himself entirely of material desires and ambition. He longs "to want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep." Yearning to exist on neutral ground as "a blessed parenthesis," he discovers that this wish is by its very nature a defeat. Accessible, sobering, and deeply involving, each novel distills Perec's unerring grasp of the human condition as well as displaying his rare comic talent. His generosity of observation is both detached and compassionate.

About this title

Review:

"Required reading for anyone interested in the evolution of this modern master" (Andrew Motion Observer)

"As a witty attack on consumerism Things is as much a parable of the Nineties as it is a story of the Sixties" (Sunday Times)

"Perec's first novel is a masterpiece of elegaic mockery" (Financial Times)

"Things, Perec's first novel, is an innovative, perceptive and even moving study of corrosive consumerism" (Independent)

"[A Man Asleep is] grimly obsessing...one turns the pages with unlikely fascination" (Euan Cameron Sunday Telegraph)

Book Description:

Two brilliant, witty and subversive stories from the modern master - cult classics for the 60s generation

About this edition

• Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1567921574
• ISBN 13: 9781567921571
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224