ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

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This is the last book written by George Perec who completed eleven chapters of the planned 28. Harry Mathews and Jacques Roubaud assembled Perec's notes for the remaining chapters of this inventive mystery story for publication. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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This article reviews Michel Thaler's "The Train From Nowhere" (in French and held by the Sackner Archive). This book does not have any verbs following in the tradition of Pindar ("Ode Minus Sigma"), Lope Carpio ( five novels without vowels). Gottlob Burmann (130 poems without r's), George Perec ("La Disparition," "Les Revantes"), Charles Vincent Wright ("Gadsby"). -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents First published in French as "La Disparition," this novel is written without the using the letter "e" in any of the words. The Sackner Archive holds the French edition which is written the same way. Books written by Adair, a British writer, and published by Writers Forum, are also held by the Sackner Archive. The following is a review of this book from Case Western Reserve University English Department in 1997 that was copied from their Internet site in 1999. Anton Vowl is missing. Slain or just put away, nobody knows, but a similar void now looms for his pals as that group frantically hunts A Void's lost protagonist. Anton is missing also a singular ABC, which graphic mark ought to form part of a sound Vowl and a common "Vowl" sound. Arranging for many such omissions in this book is our lurking author, a lipogrammatic artist and assassin who both plots Vowl's doom and plucks his customary signatorial pictograph. The author is the late Georges Perec, who in 1969 took up the...

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This is a front page review of "Le Train de Nulle Part" (The Train to Nowhere) by Michel Thaler, the non de plume of Michel Dansel. The novel is written without any verbs - heavy on exclamation points and dashes. It is of the same genre as George Perec's work without any e's. The review itself is written without verbs. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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This is a book of poems out of the Oulipou school of poetry that based their writings on mathematical formulae. Each poem, presented in a conventional way, one to a page, is reprinted without spaces, to form a grid of 11 letters to the line x 11 lines. Dado illustrated the book with neo-expressionistic human figures. A deluxe edition of this book released in also wappeared in 80 numbered copies plus 21 hors commerce copies accompanied by an original print by Dado (1933-2010). -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Amazon.com: "One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in quest of the "infraordinary": the humdrum, the non-event, the everyday--"what happens," as he put it, "when nothing happens." His choice of locale was Place Saint-Sulpice, where, ensconced behind first one cafe window, then another, he spent three days recording everything to pass through his field of vision: the people walking by; the buses and driving-school cars caught in their routes; the pigeons moving suddenly en masse; a wedding (and then a funeral) at the church in the center of the square; the signs, symbols and slogans littering everything; and the darkness that finally absorbs it all. In An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, Perec compiled a melancholic, slightly eerie and oddly touching document in which existence boils down to rhythm, writing turns into time and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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This book consists of essays on Perec and his work, e.g., Perec and Judaism, sexual aspects to his work, utopian ideas, etc. It also includes annotations and analysis of Perec's book, "Life: A User's Manual," photographic reproductions of manuscript pages, and notes for Perec's books. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Includes the English version of Perec's famous pseudo-scientific spoof, "Experimental demonstration of the tomatotrophic organization in the Soprano (Cantatrix sopranica L.)." Other pseudo-scientific writings, one in collaboration with Harry Mathews, appear in their French versions. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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From the back cover: "George Perec (1936-1982) became the most celebrated French author of his generation, his novel 'Life A User's Manual" winning the Prix Medicis in 1978. From the start he was fascinated by the possibility of employing non-fictional languages for altogether more mischievous purposes and this book ccollects together various texts in which he uses the expressionless terminology of sociology, entomology and linguistics to achieve effects they are distinctly designed to avoid. Perec was an illustrious member of the Oulipo, a group of writers which is still very much active, and who explore the possibilities of artifiical systems in literature...Not surprisingly, the present book is "experimental", but it is also strange, preposterous, and wrily intertaining." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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The catalogue reproduces and documents Massin's book and record covers as well as some typographic layouts and bookbindings. The drawing on the colophon page consists of the letter K where part of the K becomes an arrow. Inscribed on the side of the K is an inscription in French. The Sackner Archive holds the preceding two volumes with the letter "K." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents There are two pages depicting Paul Noble's three dimensional letters. The Drawing on Space book presents the work of thirteen artists of different generations from around the world, all of who use drawing to articulate spatial concepts, ranging from the physically constructed space we inhabit to the psychological dimensions of an inner world. Artists included in the book are: Russell Crotty (USA), Katja Davar (UK), Graham Gussin (UK), Alan Johnston (UK), Takehito Koganezawa (Japan), Julie Mehretu (Ethiopia / USA), Nasreen Mohamedi (India), Max Neuhaus (USA), Paul Noble (UK), Silke Schatz (Germany), Tomoko Takahashi (Japan / UK), Bjarni Thorarinsson (Iceland) and Oliver Zwink (Germany). Archival work by artists associated with Fluxus and the Situationist International provide an historical context. To purchase the book go to Publications. The accompanying exhibition Drawing on Space, conceived as an extension of the book, focused on the sculptural capacity of drawing. The exhibition...

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Thie is a made-up spoof of a medical essay. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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More than an album of photographs, more than an iconographic summation, this book is a new-style critical essay of the life of a writer, his works and his genius. It is like a film of an intellectual adventure showing the many faces of the writer, his gestures, memories of words and places, long friendships, and pages of his novels, scenes of his film making. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Includes games, anagrams, and rebuses done by Perec in 1980-1982 for the popular press and their solutions. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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It should be noted that Ernest Vincent Wright in the novel "Gadsby" also wrote a novel without the letter 'e' in 1939. This copy is a reprint of the original novel first printed in 1969. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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This is a second printing of the first edition of the novel, "Life: A User's Manual," as translated into English by David Bellos, a version also held by the Sackner Archive. The novel was the winner of the Medicis Prize (1978). It was printed on November 27, 1978 whereas the first printing took place August 25, 1978. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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The entire run of this French humor magazine is housed in a specially made box. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents Originally published in French in 1978, this novel is considered to be an outstanding example of twentieth century fiction in the tradition of Canterbury Tales and Ulysses. It is composed of a seies of stories that occur at the same time in an apartment building in the 17th arrondisement of Paris. Fictional but meaningful, the people and events are described in humorous and specific detail. The book is constructed like a puzzle and contains an index and a chronology.WikipedIa: Life A User's Manual (the original title is La Vie mode d'emploi) is Georges Perec's most famous novel, published in 1978, first translated into English by David Bellos in 1987. Its title page describes it as "novels", in the plural, the reasons for which become apparent on reading. Some critics have cited the work as an example of postmodern fiction, though Perec himself preferred to avoid labels and his only long term affiliation with any movement was with the Oulipo or OUvroir de LItterature POtentielle.La...

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The short poems by Perec were done in 1976-1977 and are presented in their original format and in addition, in a form compacting the poems without spaces between the words creating a grid of 14 x 14 letters. A letter picture, consisting of one large capital letter and clusters of smaller letters, is printed on a page facing the intaglio colored prints by Boni. The letters are taken from the words in the first line of Perec's poem. The prints incorporate abstract components, letters, and fragments of words and numbers. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.