"Wishes" by Georges Perec; Translated by Mara Cologne Whyte-Hall (Wakefield Press)

ISBN: 978-1-939663-33-7

Homophonic wordplay is language that plays with the rooted word or expression.  The meaning is both what one hears of that word, as well as the spelling and presence of that word.  There was no one on this planet like Georges Perec.  This late author is perhaps the most playful prose artist to use language.  Every year, up to his death, Perec would make and print out a little book to give out to friends, that consist of these homophonic wordplays, that in turn become little narratives or at the very least a joke.  Even a bad corny joke!   

"Wishes" is a compilation of these homophonic works, that are funny, profound, or just plain surrealistically silly.  What I have to imagine is a hellish ride into the French language for a translator, is an enjoyable read into another culture's think pattern.  Perec's work overall is always humorous, but there is also another side where he is focused on language and all of its limitations, poetry, expression, and sensuality through its textural meanings that seem endless.  A perfect book for a writer, or one who loves to write - because one is thinking of language as they write, and surely Georges Perec is the master who kicked the door open for us to wander in its maze.  

"Sphinx" by Anne Garréta (Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan & Introduction by Daniel Levin Becker)

ISBN: 978-1-941920-09-1 Deep Vellum

"Sphinx" by Anne Garréta (Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan; Introduction by Daniel Levin Becker)   Deep Vellum

A really nice mood piece of writing here.  Anne Garréta gives the nighttime life of Paris and Manhattan a nice smokey touch, as this is a tale of lovers, one is a combination of professor and DJ, and the other lover is an American dancer in Paris.  What we don't know is the gender of either of the two.   Which must have been hell for the translator Emma Ramadan to do, since the French language has very strong genderistic touches to their language.   In all honesty, as I was reading, I was imagining that the lovers were women, and I'm not sure if it was just a stupid knowledge of knowing the author is female, or somehow the nature of the two main characters.   Garréta wrote this novel when she was 25, and she became a member of Oulipo five years after she wrote "Sphinx."   One can sense the playfulness of the language as well as the no gender specific of the two characters, but it's not as experimental as Georges Perec for instance.  The story reads as a doomed love story, a very smart and textured text, but one that conveys the loss of a presence.  

- Tosh Berman

Georges Perec and the OULIPO "Winter Journeys" Atlas Press

Atlas Press, distributed by D.A.P. ISBN 9781900565646

There is nothing more fun than reading a literary work that is about books. Or the idea of books, and how it can lead to an adventure. The OULIPO group that was originally formed by Raymond Queneau is such a group that reads and writes book that becomes a game or even an quasi-science project. Georges Perec is considered the Shakespeare of the group, and therefore he leads the race with this specific book "Winter Journeys." Which, in return has caused a series of little books by writers in the OULIPO group that either continue or expand or just comments on Perec's original piece.


Perec writes of a writer named Hugo Vernier who wrote a book called "The Winter Journey" which book is before everyone else's great book. in fact his writing is the key book of avant-garde literature. Except no one has really seen it, but they have heard of it. Like a chain-letter, the various writers in Perec's world, continue the adventure of this book and what became of it or if even found.  So what we have here is really a book about literature and how powerful it is as an object, or a collection of ideas. Bibliophile galore!


For those who either tipped their toes in the OULIPO world or are full-time addicts to its games and fun, this is the book to get. Also, strange enough the key graphic aspect of the book is done by the guy who originally illustrated Raymond Roussel's great "Impression of Africa." You see everything links up. Not a paranoid conspiracy but fact!