'What happens behind the flats’ heavy doors can most often be perceived only through the those fragmented echoes, those splinters, remnants, shadows, those first moves or incidents or accidents that happen in what are called the common areas, soft little sounds damped by the red woollen carpet, embryos of communal life which never go further than the landing. The inhabitants of a single building live a few inches from each other, they are separated by a mere partition wall, they share the same spaces repeated along each corridor, they perform the same movements at the same times, turning on a tap, flushing the water closet, switching on a light, laying the table, a few dozen simultaneous existences repeated from storey to storey, from building to building, from street to street.'
Life, a User's Manual by Georges Perec
There is something incredibly banal about an apartment staircase. By drawing attention to the weathered materiality of an unloved carpet (that is frequently trodden on but rarely thought about) Perec transforms the most mundane elements of communal living into something quite fascinating. Time has stood still on 23rd June 1975 and Perec uses this opportunity to render a detailed cross section of this particular fictitious Parisian apartment block. The absence of time gives him ample room to describe in a fastidious, yet wry manner the idiosyncrasies of the objects, furniture and the inhabitants contained within each apartment.
The series of carefully crafted short stories slowly unfolds to reveal an intensely rich and interwoven narrative, peppered with historical references, literary allusions and anecdotes drawn from all over the world. An assortment of oddballs and eccentrics reside at 11 Rue Simon Crubellie. Most have been driven insane by their particular obsessions; whether it is collecting rare African conch shells or making unfathomable jigsaw puzzles. The most compelling of which recounts the tale of Bartlebooth, whose insane and futile lifelong project represents the books central tenet - of man’s attempt to impose order on an arbitrary world. Clearly, the realities of the Korean apt. are far away from that of a fictitious french apartment block. However, the novel’s vivid provocation that people construct a sense of their identities with their possessions and the random paraphernalia of everyday life is something that is quite universal. Additionally, the threads that are drawn between the internalised world of the apartment and its immediate and wider context are a reminder that all buildings, no matter how isolated, inevitably have an intimate relationship with the situation that created it.
Life, a User's Manual by Georges Perec
There is something incredibly banal about an apartment staircase. By drawing attention to the weathered materiality of an unloved carpet (that is frequently trodden on but rarely thought about) Perec transforms the most mundane elements of communal living into something quite fascinating. Time has stood still on 23rd June 1975 and Perec uses this opportunity to render a detailed cross section of this particular fictitious Parisian apartment block. The absence of time gives him ample room to describe in a fastidious, yet wry manner the idiosyncrasies of the objects, furniture and the inhabitants contained within each apartment.
The series of carefully crafted short stories slowly unfolds to reveal an intensely rich and interwoven narrative, peppered with historical references, literary allusions and anecdotes drawn from all over the world. An assortment of oddballs and eccentrics reside at 11 Rue Simon Crubellie. Most have been driven insane by their particular obsessions; whether it is collecting rare African conch shells or making unfathomable jigsaw puzzles. The most compelling of which recounts the tale of Bartlebooth, whose insane and futile lifelong project represents the books central tenet - of man’s attempt to impose order on an arbitrary world. Clearly, the realities of the Korean apt. are far away from that of a fictitious french apartment block. However, the novel’s vivid provocation that people construct a sense of their identities with their possessions and the random paraphernalia of everyday life is something that is quite universal. Additionally, the threads that are drawn between the internalised world of the apartment and its immediate and wider context are a reminder that all buildings, no matter how isolated, inevitably have an intimate relationship with the situation that created it.
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| Haddo House, London Nw3 |
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