Oulipians Have More Fun [Life A User's Manual: Part 3]
Back when the Life A User’s Manual Big Read first started,1 I referenced this huge chart of constraints that served as Perec’s guide in constructing this novel.2 At the time, the only constraint I mentioned was the “Knight’s Move,” which determines the chapter order of the novel. But as you can ...
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Cons and Quests; Things and Violence [Life A User's Manual: Part 2]
A few weeks back, I posted about the first section of Life A User’s Manual (TRANSLATED BY DAVID BELLOS), which is the Spring Big Read over at Scott Esposito’s Conversational Reading blog. As mentioned, I love Life, haven’t read it in years, and had every intention of keeping up with this reading group and ...
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Life A User's Manual and LOST and Pynchon [Perec Reading Group: Week 1]
As mentioned a couple of times already, Conversational Reading is currently hosting a Group Read of Life A User’s Manual. This project officially kicked off yesterday with the first Part (up to page 89), and since I’m actually on schedule with this (although with nothing else), I thought I’d participate by ...
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Another Book to Add to the To Read List
One of my favorite writers from the past few years has to be Enrique Vila-Matas, whose Bartleby & Co. and Montano’s Malady are absolutely fantastic. Very excited that Vila-Matas wrote an intro for our forthcoming publication of Sergio Chejfec’s My Two Worlds, and also very excited to read his new book, Never ...
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I'm All in in a Very Big Way
One of my all-time favorite books is Georges Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, and for months years, I’ve been meaning to reread it. Well, starting sometime soon, Conversational Reading will be hosting a Big Read of Perec’s classic novel. No real info up there yet, but as soon as the schedule is ...
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Six Questions with Charlotte Mandell
Zone has been getting a lot of attention recently, such as this review in the New York Times and in the recent issue of N+1. (I also found a copy on display at the Bay City Public Library—my hometown library—and someone had actually checked it out!) One of the first reviews of Zone actually appeared in the ...
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Review of "Why Translation Matters"
I know I had a week off (more or less, and thanks again to Edward Gauvin for kicking such ass last week), but all I’ve really got right now is this review I wrote of Edie Grossman’s Why Translation Matters. Honestly, this is one of the only things I’ve ever written that I’m pretty proud of. (And all ...
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