BOOK REVIEW: 3 Edition 2

• Published in: Independent (London, England : 1986) England : 1986), 1994
• Main Author: Blake, Robin
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abrahams, William; Ackland, Valentine; Adie, Kate; Akroyd, Freda; Almodovar, Pedro (1952- ); Anderson, Terry; Andric, Ivo (1892-1975); Arlott, John; Arlott, Timothy; Auster, Paul (1947-2024); Banks, Iain; Beaton, Cecil; Bellos, David; Bellow, Saul; Benedict, Pinckney; Bernhard, Thomas; Brady, Joan; Briscoe, Joanna; Britten, Benjamin (1913-1976); Brodkey, Harold; Byatt, A S (1936- ); Campbell, James; Chomsky, Noam; Christiansen, Rupert; Clark, Kenneth; Cliff, Michelle; Cole, John Grady; Cooper, Gary; Costa, Margaret Jull; Dahl, Roald; Dibdin, Michael; Dickey, James; Dimbleby, Jonathan; Diski, Jenny; Disraeli, Benjamin (1804-1881); Diss, Perry; Dixon, Rory; Drakulic, Slavenka; Dye, Alison; Eliot, T S; Farr, Harry; Field, Michael; Frey, Julia; Garbo, Greta; Gellhorn, Martha; Gilbert, Martin; Gilmore, Frank; Gilmore, Gary; Gilmore, Mikal; Graves, Richard Perceval; Gregory, Martyn; Gunn, Thom; Harman, Claire; Hastings, Selina; Himmelblau, Gerda; Hollingworth, Clare; Holloway, David; Hughes, Richard Arthur Warren (1900-1976); Hughes, Ted; Janacek, Leos; Jellicoe, Geoffrey; Kennedy, John Fitzgerald; Laker, Jim; Levy, Andrea (1956-2019); Lewis, Alun; Longfort, Nathan; Malcolm, Janet; McCarthy, Cormac; McCreery, Charles; Minhinnick, Robert (1952- ); Minot, Susan; Moody, Rick; Moore, Lorrie; Muldoon, Paul; Nash, Paul; Neil, Barbara; Ninh, Bao; Ondaatje, Michael (1943- ); Pardee, Joan Marie; Parham, Billy; Peel, Robert; Perec, Georges (1936-1982); Pinker, Steven; Plath, Sylvia; Ponting, Clive; Rees, Geoffrey; Reeves, Maud Pember; Reeves, Richard; Reverte, Arturo Perez; Rich, Adrienne; Ronan, Frank; Salaman, Nicholas; Saramago, Jose (1922-2010); Sebba, Anne; Selvadurai, Shyam; Sheldrake, Rupert; Sieghart, William; Smith, Paul; Souhami, Diana; Spens, Michael; Spindler, Konrad; St Aubin de Teran, Lisa; Stansky, Peter; Stevenson, Anne; Taylor, Peter; Thomas, Edward; Thomas, Elizabeth Marshall; Thubron, Colin (1939- ); Treglown, Jeremy; Tyrrell, John; Van Kieu, Kim; Waite, Terry; Warner, Sylvia Townsend; Waugh, Evelyn; Weiner, Jonathan; Weintraub, Stanley; Wilson, Elizabeth; Wolf, Naomi; Wright, Stephen
• ISSN: 0951-9467

[Georges Perec]'s paternal grandparents were Polish Jews. They emigrated unwillingly to France with two of their three children in the 1920s to escape the grotesque restrictions that were put upon their lives. (Jews were unable to practise medicine or attend the lyceum; they were even forbidden to walk in public parks.) In 1934 Perec's father Izie married another Polish Jewish immigrant, Cyrla or Cecile Szulewicz, and Georges was born on 7 (or perhaps 5) March 1936. The young family lived in Belleville, which was then a predominantly Jewish quarter. When war broke out in September 1939, Izie Perec joined the Foreign Legion, and was killed in action in June 1940, six days before the Franco- German armistice. The first arrests of Jews in Paris took place in May 1941, and there were further arrests in August. Soon after, Georges was sent to relatives near Grenoble in the so-called zone libre, where he had to learn to conceal something that he did not yet understand - the fact that he was Jewish. His mother remained in Paris with the rest of her family. She got a job in a factory and wore the yellow star. Her own attempt at escape failed, and in January 1943 she was arrested and interned at Drancy. On 11 February she was deported to Auschwitz in a cattle-truck train with 998 Jews on board. Of those who arrived alive, 196 were selected as workers and the rest were immediately gassed. [David Bellos] records Perec's literary output, his macro-acrostics, his crossword puzzles, his radio plays, his film scripts, his musical collaborations, his amicable separation from [Paulette Petras], his affair with Suzanne Lipanska, his friendship with Harry Mathews and turbulent happiness with Catherine Binet. As the book goes on he devotes an increasing amount of space to explaining the details of Perec's Oulipian exercises. He sets out the complex principles that govern the writing of Life: A User's Manual (1978), Perec's best known work.