Georges Perec

Georges Perec liked to try things in his writing. Experiments. Could he write a novel without the letter “e,” for example? Could he make a memoir consisting only of sentences that begin “I remember,” he wondered? How about a 1200-word palidrome?

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris is another of Perec's experiments. He spent three days at Place Saint-Sulpice recording everything he saw—buses, people, pigeons, and more—and the result is this little fifty-ish page book. Perec was in search of the “infraordinary,” which he defined as “what happens when nothing happens.”

I'd say he found it.

So, is this a book you need to read? Barbara, who complained last night at book club at the slowness of The Wind in the Willows? Barbara should skip this one. But if you are like me and get an odd sense of pleasure from quirky books? Yep, spend the seven bucks on a used copy somewhere and take a close look at this one.