Life, a Complex Puzzle

French literature has one of the richest tapestries among the literatures of Europe—if not the entire world. With a legacy that spans centuries, it has established itself as one of the most influential and important literary traditions globally. Its legacy transcends time and physical boundaries. French literature boasts some of the world’s most prominent writers. Both readers and non-readers alike have encountered names such as Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac, Émile Zola, Stendhal, Alexandre Dumas, Gustave Flaubert, and Marcel Proust, among others. These authors have produced some of the most enduring literary works—their writings remain relevant in contemporary literary discourse and are among the most studied. The influence of their works—such as Hugo’s Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (also known as Remembrance of Things Past), Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary—is deeply embedded in many modern literary creations.

Further underscoring French literature’s status as a citadel of literary excellence is the number of Nobel Laureates in Literature it has produced. With sixteen laureates, France leads globally in this category, the most recent being Annie Ernaux, honored in 2022. This highlights the wealth of talented writers that French literature has contributed to the world. Another prominent name is Georges Perec. Perec’s entry into the literary world began while studying history and sociology at the Sorbonne. He started writing reviews and essays for La Nouvelle Revue française and Les Lettres nouvelles, two prominent literary publications. In 1965, he published his debut novel, Les Choses: Une histoire des années soixante (Things: A Story of the Sixties), which became an immediate literary sensation and laid the foundation for a celebrated career.

If there is one thing Perec is renowned for, it is his innovative writing; he is considered the greatest literary innovator of his generation. A prime example of this innovation is La Vie: mode d’emploi, often cited as his magnum opus. Originally published in 1978, it was made available to English readers in 1987 as Life: A User’s Manual, in a translation by David Bellos. The novel is set in a seven-story apartment block at 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier in Paris. Including the cellars and two attic floors, the building has ten stories. Perec guides readers through every room in the apartment building, each inhabited—past or present—by a diverse cast of individuals. We are introduced to these characters as Perec navigates every nook and cranny of the labyrinthine structure.

From this, one can make a deduction which is quite certainly the ultimate truth of jigsaw puzzles: despite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzlemaker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other.

Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual

The novel’s structure is deceptively simple but slowly reveals itself as a jigsaw puzzle, divided into six parts and ninety-nine brief chapters, along with a preamble and a prologue. Each chapter captures the essence of a room in the building. Perec casually describes the contents of each room, which on the surface appear to be minor details. However, under his meticulous and masterful writing, these rooms come to life. Perec provides intricate details of furnishings, fixtures, decorations, and unique artifacts in each unit—slowly transforming them into essential pieces of a larger puzzle. As such, the building becomes a puzzle in itself. The novel is filled with puzzles, both literal and metaphorical, ranging from crosswords and acrostics to mathematical references.

In a universe where puzzles are ubiquitous, the most direct and literal reference is the puzzle created by one of the building’s occupants. Percival Bartlebooth, an affluent British man who devotes his life to seemingly futile endeavors, first came to the building to learn how to paint watercolors under the tutelage of the apartment’s longest-standing resident, Serge Valène. Valène is an aging painter who acts as both an observer and a participant. Under Valène’s mentorship, Bartlebooth – his name combines two prominent literary characters, Herman Melville’s Bartleby and Valery Larbaud’s Barnabooth – spent a decade learning painting. After learning about painting, Bartlebooth traveled the world painting five hundred seascapes, which he then sent back to Paris. These paintings were then turned into a jigsaw puzzle by the craftsman Gaspard Winckler, another resident of 11 rue Simon-Crubellier.

With his second mission a success, Bartlebooth returned to the apartment where he spent the next twenty years reassembling the puzzles. Upon each puzzle’s completion, they are treated and rebound with a special solution created by Georges Morellet, another occupant of the apartment complex. The puzzles are effectively chemically erased before they are returned to the site where they were painted. They are effectively removed from existence, and only traces of the marks where it was cut and re-joined remain. It was an exercise in futility, an act of absurdity that nevertheless underscored the power of Bartlebooth’s ambition and willpower. His ambitiousness was matched by the grandness of his mentor’s dream. Valène dreams of painting the entire block captured from an elevated vantage point. The façade is removed, revealing all the occupants and the details of their lives. A separate chapter – Chapter 51 – was dedicated to elucidating Valène’s ideas.

But 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier is not just a puzzle. It is also a universe of stories, with its hallways and balconies acting as conduits where memories flow. Each room bears witness to the passage of time and the quirks of its occupants. They are silent spectators to the unfolding of the stories of a bevy of equally intriguing occupants. Apart from Bartlebooth and those orbiting around him, we meet Madame de Beaumont, Véra Orlova, a Russian émigrée and celebrated singer who was married to an archaeologist. Living with her are her granddaughters, Anne and Béatrice Breidel, who are each other’s antithesis. Like Madame de Beaumont, Elzbieta Orlowska is an émigré of Polish provenance. She fled Tunisia with her son, Mahmoud, and rebuilt their life in Paris.

Who, on seeing a Parisian apartment house, has never thought of it as indestructible? A bomb, a fire, an earthquake could certainly bring it down, but what else? In the eyes of an individual, of a family, or even a dynasty, a town, street, or house seems unchangeable, untouchable by time, by the ups and downs of human life, to such an extent that we believe we can compare and contrast the fragility of our condition to the invulnerability of stone.

Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual

Among the several creative minds that lived in the building is Rémi Rorschach. He is a television producer and a former music-hall performer who was on the way to becoming a novelist. On the other hand, Madame Moreaui is the building’s senior resident. She is a businesswoman who successfully converted a small family firm into a national enterprise. They are among the artists, collectors, servants, businessmen, and most importantly, dreamers who walked the hallways of the apartment block and occupied its different rooms. They are yet another manifestation of puzzle pieces that make up the collective narrative. Each character brought something to the table, providing interesting textures to the lush tapestry. Their stories seep into the rooms they occupied, extending to the peripheries of the building. 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier is then a microcosm, with each room, including the items within it, having its own story to share. They echoed the secrets, trials, tribulations, and histories of its occupants.

What emerges then is a lush tapestry. At the onset, they seem to share very little. But as Perec invites the readers into each room and into the minutiae of each character’s life, a realization slowly emerges. As the characters’ lives orbited each other in 11 rue Simon-Crubellier, we begin to understand that they had so much more in common than just being neighbors and residents of the apartment complex. Their lives intersect in the most unexpected ways. Some were connected by marriage, while some were connected by affairs. Some were bonded by business interests, and some by common interests, the arts being a prevalent element. Some also shared tragedies, while some are rivals. Threads of serendipitous moments and even history linked the characters. The diversity of the characters encompasses various dimensions of emotions as well as the full scope of the human experience, ranging from their struggles and trials to the fulfillment of dreams and aspirations, to their eventual successes. These are experiences that resonate with the wider audience.

Riding the crests and troughs of the story, a common theme is tragedy and loss. Tragic stories permeate the walls of the apartment building. Madame de Beaumont’s life, for instance, was marked with losses. She lost her husband to depression while her daughter was murdered. Her family also perished during the Russian Revolution. Death loomed above the characters’ lives and impacted them in different ways. The death of Winckler’s wife left him adrift, prompting him to abandon his craft. Winckler’s own death signified the start of the end for Bartlebooth’s project. Ultimately, death left some characters unable to fulfill their dreams, nor were they able to pursue their ambitions. Valene’s canvas was blank at his death, while Bartebooth dies at his table, unable to complete his puzzle. The inevitability of death underscores not only the folly of life but the irony of incompleteness.

The loss of ambition also permeates the novel. Bartlebooth’s project, for instance, was thwarted by unforeseen challenges. An archaeologist, on the other hand, failed in his quest. Some characters who achieve success find it hollow. Yet amid this darkness, the resilience of the characters shines. They found the courage to move forward and rebuild their lives. They did not let their circumstances weigh them down. Resilience was personified by Madame Moreau and Elzbieta Orlowska while Madame de Beaumont exemplified strength of character. Madame de Beaumont’s story is also about survival in the throes of tragedy. Their stories also captured adaptation. Meanwhile, other characters grapple with universal questions about identity, purpose, and the challenges of navigating life.

Or from even further back, from as far back as she could remember, there rose the fascination she had felt as a little girl every time she saw her grandfather shaving: he would sit down, usually around seven in the morning, after a frugal breakfast, and with a serious air make up his lather with a very soft brush in a bowl of very hot water, a lather so thick and white and firm that even after more than seventy-five years it still made her mouth water.

Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual

The novel’s narrative structure mirrors its thematic content. Some stories came in fragments. Some came in the form of anecdotes and even digressions. Some stories are tragic, while some are comic. Trivial stories were contrasted with splendid ones, some more engaging than the others. Despite the stark dichotomies between these stories and how they were crafted, each added to the mosaic of the story. This is a further reflection of the universe that 11 rue Simon-Crubellier has become. However, like the characters, the apartment complex itself was not safe from doom. Death emptied it of its occupants. Some residents also departed, leaving even more rooms unoccupied. Development constantly threatened it. Fragile and in a constant state of decay, its demise – demolition – was also inevitable. It is fated to be replaced by something new.

However, the dissolution of the apartment complex does not erase all the events that took place inside. The stories, from the trials and tribulations and struggles of the characters to the minutiae of life, remain. They have converged in the apartment complex, and their memories have become part and parcel of the structure. The cruelty of the passage of time does not stifle them. The building is true to itself. It is the encapsulation of a major section of human experience with the various stories it witnessed. These stories, and the rooms the residents occupied, are puzzle pieces that make up the collective whole. It is true to its title, Life. The stories that make up the novel’s rich tapestry provide glimpses into worlds and experiences that resonate with the readers. All of these elements were woven together by Perec’s dexterous hands. He has crafted an insightful manual, built with well-written sentences that resonated with erudition.

But as the characters realized and experienced, and as the novel demonstrated, capturing the totality of life can be a futile exercise. Still, Life: A User’s Manual is a literary masterpiece—a reminder that life is a grand puzzle. Sometimes the pieces fit; sometimes they don’t. In the convergence of disparate stories within one structure, 11 Rue Simon-Crubellier becomes a universe unto itself. Even the novel’s structure is a puzzle, brimming with narrative invention. Its ambition matches its structure. Perec is both a storyteller and a puzzlemaker. In what many regard as his magnum opus, Perec’s innovation, precision, and storytelling prowess shine. Life: A User’s Manual is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, even as it delves into death, betrayal, and loss. It is a profound meditation on life, celebrating the vivid beauty of the human experience through the stories of a single building and its many lives.

 Let us imagine a man whose wealth is equalled only by his indifference to what wealth generally brings, a man of exceptional arrogance who wishes to fix, to describe, and to exhaust not the whole world—merely to state such an ambition is enough to invalidate it—but a constituted fragment of the world: in the face of the inextricable incoherence of things, he will set out to execute a (necessarily limited) programme right the way through, in all its irreducible, intact entirety.

Georges Perec, Life: A User’s Manual
Book Specs

Author: Georges Perec
Translator (from French): David Bellos
Publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.
Publishing Date: 1988 (1978)
Number of Pages: 500
Genre: Literary, Postmodernism

Synopsis

Life: A User’s Manual is an unclassified masterpiece, a sprawling compendium as encyclopedic as Dante’s Commedia and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and, in its break with tradition, as inspiring as Joyce’s Ulysses. Perec’s spellbinding puzzle begins in an apartment block in the XVIIth arrondissement of Paris where, chapter by chapter, room by room, like an onion being peeled, an extraordinary rich cast of characters is revealed in a series of tales that are bizarre, unlikely, moving, funny, or (sometimes) quite ordinary. From the confessions of a racing cyclist to the plans of an avenging murderer, from a young ethnographer obsessed with a Sumatran tribe to the death of a trapeze artist, from the fears of an ex-croupier to the dreams of a sex-change pop star to an eccentric English millionaire who has devised the ultimate pastime, Life is a manual of human irony, portraying the mixed marriages of fortunes, passions and despairs, betrayals and bereavements, of hundreds of lives in Paris and around the world.

But the novel is more than an extraordinary range of fictions; it is a closely observed account of life and experience. The apartment block’s one hundred rooms are arranged in a magic square, and the book as a whole is peppered with a staggering range of literary puzzles and allusions, acrostics, problems of chess and logic, crosswords, and mathematical formulae. All are there for the reader to solve in the best tradition of the detective novel. (Source: Goodreads)

About the Author

Georges Perec was born on March 7, 1936, in a working-class district of Paris, France. He was the only child born to a couple of Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s. At a young age, he was orphaned. His father perished in action during the Second World War, while his mother died in a concentration camp. He was then raised by his paternal uncle and aunt, who formally adopted him in 1945. He attended the Sorbonne, where he studied history and sociology. While studying at university, he started writing reviews and essays for La Nouvelle Revue française and Les Lettres nouvelles, prominent literary publications.

Before pursuing a career in writing, Perec served in the French army as a paratrooper (XVIIIe Régiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes). In 1961, Perec began working at the Neurophysiological Research Laboratory in the unit’s research library, funded by the CNRS, as an archivist. In 1965, he published his first novel, Les Choses: une histoire des années soixante (Things: A Story of the Sixties). It was critically received, winning the Prix Renaudot. An early manifestation of his innovation was the novel La Disparition (1969; A Void), which was written entirely without using the letter e, as was its translation. Another book considered by many as a masterpiece of innovative autobiography is W; ou, le souvenir d’enfance (1975; W; or, The Memory of Childhood). However, his most ambitious and most critically acclaimed novel is La Vie: mode d’emploi (1978; Life: A User’s Manual).

In 1967, Perec joined the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Workshop of Potential Literature), shortly known as Oulipo. The group is devoted to the pursuit of new forms for literature. Perec’s oeuvre perfectly encapsulated this as Perec would be known as one of the, if not the greatest, literary innovator of his generation. However, Perec is a heavy smoker, which contributed to his diagnosis of lung cancer. On March 3, 1982, a couple of days short of his 46th birthday, he died in  Ivry-sur-Seine.