La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

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La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams

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Lists with This Book. Apr 06, Miriam Bridenne rated it it was amazing Recommends it for: At first glance, La Boutique Obscure may appear like a singular and intriguing exception, within the work of Georges Perec, a work usually placed under the sign of his passion for systems and constraint writing. In this volume, Perec records his dreams in chronological order. At the time, Perec had just broken up with Suzanne Lipinska —a break-up which involved a painful separation from At first glance, La Boutique Obscure may appear like a singular and intriguing exception, within the work of Georges Perec, a work usually placed under the sign of his passion for systems and constraint writing.

Georges Perec. La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams.

In order to keep a looming depression at bay, Perec started meticulously documenting his dreams. As the diary proceeds through the years, these narratives — at first short, haunting and enigmatic — progressively turn into extremely coherent and well-articulated plots. As a matter of fact, while recording his dreams, Perec was also working on W or Memory of Childhood, to be published in Sometime hilariously funny, sometime plainly and simply harrowing, La Boutique obscure is a unique occasion to explore the nightlife and unconscious struggles of a stellar writer of the 20th Century.

Mar 29, Adam Floridia rated it it was ok. Daniel Tosh once joked, "Have you ever started telling someone a dream you had and then halfway through realized you're retarded? A few interesting things about this book are 1 that as personal as dreams are, it's amazing how universal certain aspects can be 2 the "view" it gives into Perec's subconscious mind particularly interesting after reading his Daniel Tosh once joked, "Have you ever started telling someone a dream you had and then halfway through realized you're retarded?

A few interesting things about this book are 1 that as personal as dreams are, it's amazing how universal certain aspects can be 2 the "view" it gives into Perec's subconscious mind particularly interesting after reading his biography. Other than uniqueness of actually publishing a book relaying his dreams, I don't think there's really much Perec-ian sp? Each dream-description is spartan,containing nowhere near the level of detail, the attention to minutia typical of Perec.

Sure, dreams may be difficult to remember and, perhaps in elaborating the author felt he would be constructing subjectively rather than reporting objectively, but I'm still sure he could have given more thorough descriptions.

Feb 19, Michael Seidlinger rated it it was amazing. The force of dreams and the half-memories they leave behind culminated in the fact that the moment you wake, the dream collapses; it dies. Perec captured the bits and pieces into literary tombs from which the dreamer can only do one thing: Binnenkort dubbele bespreking samen met 'Poging tot uitputtende beschrijving van een plek in Parijs op De Reactor.

Feb 20, Tosh rated it liked it. Dream diaries are usually only interesting between the person who is having that dream and their doctor. Beyond that when someone comes up to you and says "I have a dream and its But alas what we have here is a dream book by the great Georges Perec, and even though it is his dreams But Leiris maybe a more twisted character than Perec, and not as conceptual. So "la boutique obscure: I imagine that he started this project with a beginning and an ending -perhaps taking over the role of an actual everyday journal. But i am just guessing here; what we do have is very much little narratives by Perec, which shows his dream world is very straight forward in a sense.

At least one gets the sense that there is a beginning, middle part and then end. Like Godard, not always in that order, but there is a sense of some sort of organization within the Perec dream world. Leiris on the other hand is more sexual and there is sex in the Perec dream world and a tad wilder. Also his imagery is more poetic and seductive of sorts. Perec is sort of listing his dreams for maybe a future analysis. But the best part of the book for me is the end index, where he list categories like "Staircases" and the color "Red" for instance - and he mentions how many times he had a dream with the color red in it and so forth.

Which comes to mind on my own writing project, which is not about dreams, but I am writing something that is very systematic, and I realize that some of that came from Perec and his work.

1. Freedom?
2. Aufgetrennte Tage (German Edition)?
3. La Boutique Obscure: Dreams by Georges Perec – The Literateur;
4. Georges Perec. La Boutique Obscure: Dreams. - Free Online Library?

So, yeah its interesting but mostly for the process than anything else. Sep 29, Dane Huckelbridge rated it it was amazing. No, it's not really a novel. It's not a memoir. And it's not autobiography. It's essentially a book of recorded dreams, and although there is no coherent plot or structure—as one might expect from such a composite—it is incredible nonetheless. Being given this peculiar glimpse into someone else's dream life is something truly special; compelling, disturbing, intriguing, and border-line hypnotic.

There's something so familiar about them, so eerily relatable, that the book becomes impossible to pu No, it's not really a novel. There's something so familiar about them, so eerily relatable, that the book becomes impossible to put down. I'll admit, I've never read anything quite like this, but I truly enjoyed it. Perec is an original, and with this work, a strange and somnambulant sort of literary pioneer. Feb 19, Kelley rated it really liked it Shelves: I think I need to read A Life in Words, and then reread this.

La Boutique Obscure » Melville House Books

I already enjoyed it quite a it, despite not knowing much about Perec's life. View all 6 comments. De geniale, zeer speelse en tegelijk ook zeer melancholieke Georges Perec heeft enorm veel geschreven: En ook dit intrigerend ongrijpbare boek met dromen, die onlangs mooi zijn vertaald en geannoteerd door Edu Borger. Perecs fascinatie voor dromen had alles te maken met de De geniale, zeer speelse en tegelijk ook zeer melancholieke Georges Perec heeft enorm veel geschreven: Perecs fascinatie voor dromen had alles te maken met de psychoanalyses die hij onderging, vanwege het traumatisch verlies van zijn beide Joodse ouders in de Tweede Wereldoorlog en mogelijk ook vanwege enkele minder soepel verlopende liefdes.

Maar met het opschrijven van die dromen lijkt hij eerder hun raadsel te willen bewaren dan op te lossen, want hij nummert en dateert de dromen wel, en geeft er ook verklarende titels aan, maar hij maakt van elke droombeschrijving een meerduidige tekst die zijn sleutel niet prijsgeeft. Daardoor is elke tekst intrigerend meerduidig, en daardoor is het boekje een fascinerende verzameling cryptische fragmenten.

Zelf spreekt Perec van "een bos teksten, als een offerande neergelegd voor de poorten van de 'koninklijke weg' die ik nog moet doorlopen- met open ogen". Die koninklijke weg is een verwijzing naar Freud, die over de 'koninklijke weg van de droomduiding' sprak, en Perec zegt hier dus voor mijn gevoel dat die dromen een bos teksten zijn die geen droomduiding hebben ondergaan: Misschien heeft Perec zijn dromen soms gestileerd of met creatieve details verrijkt, en meer gedaan dan ze alleen noteren, en misschien heeft hij dit boek deels gevuld met verzonnen dromen, maar hij heeft er bewust geen verklaarbaar en gesloten 'geheel' van gemaakt.

En in een latere terugblik op dit boekje opgenomen in de prachtige verzamelbundel "Ik ben geboren" heeft hij dit boekje zelfs geduid als een "zuivere schrijfervaring: Perec noemt die teksten ook "helder in al hun vreemdheid", maar ze blijven fundamenteel vreemd, mijns inziens juist ook omdat ze geen onthulbare symbolen of diepere waarheden zeggen te bevatten. Veel van zijn dromen zijn opmerkelijk humoristisch, of laten zich lezen als onderhoudende en surrealistische vignetten vol verrassingen.

Maar naar mijn idee is de toon vooral unheimlich en melancholiek. In droom 1 schrijft hij bijvoorbeeld: Het gaat natuurlijk niet echt om een kamp, maar het beeld van een kamp, een overdrachtelijk kamp, een kamp waarvan ik weet dat het niet meer dan een vertrouwd beeld is, alsof ik onvermoeibaar altijd hetzelfde droom, alsof ik nooit iets anders droom, alsof ik nooit iets anders doe dan van dat kamp dromen".

Dat niet te bevatten persoonlijke verlies die niet te begrijpen verdwijning doemt hier als spookbeeld op in het beeld van een gedroomd kamp dat niet voor niets een overdrachtelijk kamp wordt genoemd, dus een onwerkelijk kamp dat niet in rationele wakende woorden te bevatten is. Perec heeft dit verlies vaak een plek gegeven in veel van zijn romans, maar steeds als verborgen toespeling of cryptisch raadsel.

Many of the dreams related contain a variety of games that play with language. Perec experiments with typography and graphic representation to strike at a more visual depiction of the dream world. He self-consciously reveals the decisions he makes when linguistically presenting each dream. As he describes the incident, this word appears in a different, larger font to evoke its visual impact. Elsewhere, Perec places alternative word choices closely above the words he has used to indicate a struggle with enunciation. The book details the process of writing through constraints via its own experimentation with form and appearance.

Many proper nouns are replaced within the text by initials or pronouns, or in some instances, full stops.