This is just so much fun. While searching through an archive in an old farmhouse on the eve of World War II, a literary historian finds a novel from the 1860s that contains almost the entirety of modern French literature in the intervening era, containing echoes of everything from the Symbolists to the Modernists, and everything in between. But before he can visit the library again, the war intervenes, and when he finally returns many years later, the book is gone. Tormented by a lost document that could change the course of French literary history, the man’s life and mind begin to unravel, in a story that examines plagiarism and obsession, while never diverting from what always seems to be Perec’s primary concern, which is having a bloody good laugh.
Through the device of the anticipatory plagiaristic novel, Perec manages to pack an entire alternate universe into just a few pages. I bought a thin one-story pocket edition of this story from Burley Fisher Books, but curiously, in writing this piece, I searched my house for the book but I believe that it too is now lost. Perec is laughing somewhere.
Originally published in French in 1979. Translated by John Sturrock, found in The Winter Journey, Syren, 1996
A Personal Anthology 