La Boutique Obscure: 124 Dreams Read online

  praise for georges perec

  “One of the most singular literary personalities in the world, a writer who resembled absolutely no one else.”

  —Italo Calvino

  “It will be impossible for us to think of contemporary French writing in the same way again.”

  —Paul Auster

  “The finest French writer of the twentieth century.”

  —Context

  “The genius of Perec [is] to marry a deeply human melancholy with dazzling formal experiments.”

  —The Guardian

  “Wonderful and extraordinary writings.”

  —The London Review of Books

  “Fiendishly clever.”

  —Times Literary Supplement

  “Perec’s artistry has achieved a perfect balance between allure and imponderability.”

  —The Los Angeles Times

  La Boutique Obscure

  Copyright © 1973, 1998, Éditions Denoël, Paris

  Translation and Afterword copyright © 2012, Daniel Levin Becker

  Cet ouvrage publié dans le cadre du programme d’aide à la publication bénéficie du soutien du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France représenté aux Etats-Unis. / This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-176-8

  A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  v3.1

  for Nour

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Preface

  No. 1: May 1968

  No. 2: November 1968

  No. 3: November 1968

  No. 4: December 1968

  No. 5: December 1968

  No. 6: January 1969

  No. 7: January 1969

  No. 8: September 1969

  No. 9: September 1969

  No. 10: October 1969

  No. 11: October 1969

  No. 12: October 1969

  No. 13: February 1970

  No. 14: February 1970

  No. 15: May 1970

  No. 16: July 1970

  No. 17: July 1970

  No. 18: August 1970

  No. 19: August 1970

  No. 20: August 1970

  No. 21: September 1970

  No. 22: August 1970

  No. 23: September 1970

  No. 24: September 1970

  No. 25: September 1970

  No. 26: October 1970

  No. 27: October 1970

  No. 28: October 1970 (Neuweiler)

  No. 29: November 1970

  No. 30: November 1970

  No. 31: November 1970

  No. 32: November 1970

  No. 33: November 1970

  No. 34: November 1970

  No. 35: December 1970

  No. 36: December 1970

  No. 37: December 1970

  No. 38: 1966

  No. 39: 1968

  No. 40: 1972

  No. 41: January 1971

  No. 42: January 1971

  No. 43: January 1971

  No. 44: January 1971

  No. 45: January 1971

  No. 46: January 1971

  No. 47: February 1971

  No. 48: February 1971

  No. 49: February 1971

  No. 50: February 1971

  No. 51: February 1971

  No. 52: February 1971

  No. 53: February 1971

  No. 54: February 1971

  No. 55: March 1971

  No. 56: March 1971

  No. 57: March 1971

  No. 58: March 1971 (in the morning following the night of dream no. 57)

  No. 59: March 1971

  No. 60: March 1971

  No. 61: March 1971

  No. 62: March 1971

  No. 63: March 1971 (Sarrebruck)

  No. 64: March 1971

  No. 65: April 1971

  No. 66: April 1971

  No. 67: May 1971

  No. 68: May 1971

  No. 69: May 1971

  No. 70: May 1971

  No. 71: May 1971

  No. 72: May 1971

  No. 73: May 1971

  No. 74: June 1971

  No. 75: June 1971

  No. 76: July 1971

  No. 77: July 1971

  No. 78: July 1971

  No. 79: July 1971 (Lans)

  No. 80: July 1971 (Lans)

  No. 81: July 1971 (Lans)

  No. 82: July 1971 (Lans)

  No. 83: July 1971 (Lans)

  No. 84: August 1971

  No. 85: August 1971

  No. 86: August 1971

  No. 87: September 1971

  No. 88: September 1971

  No. 89: September 1971

  No. 90: October 1971

  No. 91: October 1971

  No. 92: October 1971

  No. 93: October 1971

  No. 94: October 1971

  No. 95: October 1971

  No. 96: October 1971

  No. 97: November 1971

  No. 98: November 1971

  No. 99: November 1971

  No. 100: December 1971

  No. 101: January 1972

  No. 102: January 1972

  No. 103: January 1972

  No. 104: February 1972

  No. 105: February 1972

  No. 106: February 1972

  No. 107: February 1972

  No. 108: February 1972

  No. 109: March 1972

  No. 110: March 1972

  No. 111: March 1972 (Blevy)

  No. 112: March 1972 (Blevy)

  No. 113: April 1972

  No. 114: April 1972

  No. 115: April 1972

  No. 116: May 1972

  No. 117: May 1972

  No. 118: June 1972

  No. 119: June 1972

  No. 120: June 1972

  No. 121: July 1972

  No. 122: July 1972

  No. 123: August 1972

  No. 124: August 1972

  Afterword

  since I think

  that the real

  is in no way real

  how am I to believe

  that dreams are dreams

  Jacques Roubaud and Saigyō Hōshi

  Preface

  Everyone has dreams. Some remember theirs, far fewer recount them, and very few write them down. Why write them down, anyway, knowing you will only sell them out (and no doubt sell yourself out in the process)?

  I thought I was recording the dreams I was having; I have realized that it was not long before I began having dreams only in order to write them.

  These dreams—overdreamed, overworked, overwritten—what could I then expect of them, if not to make them into texts, a bundle of texts left as an offering at the gates of that “royal road” I still must travel with my eyes open?

  Insofar as I have sought some degree of homogeneity in the transcription and then the composition of these dreams, it seems worth giving a few specifications on their typography and formatting:

  —a paragraph break corresponds to a change in time, place, feeling, mood, etc., felt as such within the dream;

  —the use of italics, which is rare, indicates a particularly striking element of the dream;

  —the greater or lesser size of the gap between paragraphs is meant to correspond to the greater or lesser importance of passage
s that were forgotten or indecipherable upon waking;

  —the sign / / indicates an intentional omission.

  No. 1

  May 1968

  The height gauge

  The height gauge (the name escapes me: metronome, perch) where must stay ad. lib. for several hours. Naturally. The armoire (the two hiding places). The rehearsal. Humiliation. ?. Arbitrary power.

  A scene with several people. There is a height gauge in the corner. I know I am at risk of having to spend several hours under it; it’s an act of bullying rather than real torture, but extremely uncomfortable, because there is nothing holding the top of the gauge and, after a while under it, one might shrink.

  Naturally, I am dreaming and I know that I am dreaming, naturally, that I am in a prison camp. It’s not really a prison camp, of course, but an image of a prison camp, a dream of a prison camp, a prison-camp metaphor, a prison camp I know only as a familiar image, as though I were ceaselessly dreaming the same dream, as though I never dreamed of anything else, as though I never did anything but dream of this prison camp.

  It’s clear that the threat of the gauge is enough, at first, to concentrate in itself all the terror of the camp. And then it seems it’s not so bad. In any case, I escape the threat; it doesn’t come to pass. But it is precisely my avoidance of this threat that most clearly proves the essence of the camp: the only thing that saves me is the indifference of the torturer, his liberty to do or not to do; I am entirely at the mercy of his arbitrary power (in exactly the same way as I am at the mercy of this dream: I know it is only a dream, but I cannot escape it).

  The second sequence modifies these themes slightly. Two characters (one is without a doubt myself) open an armoire in which two hiding spots have been forged, crammed with deportees’ valuables. By “valuables” I mean any objects that could increase the safety and chances of survival of their owner, be they bare necessities or objects with some exchange value. The first hiding spot contains woolens, countless woolens, old and moth-eaten and drab. The second hole, which contains money, is made of a rocker device: one of the armoire’s shelves is hollow inside and its cover lifts up like that of a school desk. But this little stash seems unsound, and I am just activating the mechanism that opens it to take the money out when someone enters. An officer. In an instant we understand that all of this is useless anyway. It also becomes clear that dying and leaving this room are one and the same.

  The third sequence could surely, had I not forgotten it completely, have supplied a name for the camp: Treblinka, or Terezienbourg, or Katowice. The performance might have been the Terezienbourg Requiem (Les Temps modernes 196., no., pp.…–…). The moral of this faded episode seems to invoke older dreams: we can save ourselves (sometimes) by playing.…

  No. 2

  November 1968

  Tiles

  With a laugh that can be described only as “sardonic,” she began to make passes at a stranger, in my presence. I said nothing. She kept it up, so I eventually left the room.

  I am in my room with A. and a casual acquaintance, whom I am teaching to play Go. He seems to understand the game, until I realize he thinks he is learning to play bridge. The game actually consists of distributing letter tiles (more like a kind of lotto than a kind of Scrabble).

  No. 3

  November 1968

  Itinerary

  : known secret maze, doors of chests (round, armored), hallways, very long trek toward the encounter

  and then the same path now known to all.

  No. 4

  December 1968

  Illusion

  I am dreaming

  She is beside me

  I tell myself I’m dreaming

  But the pressure of her hand against mine feels too strong

  I wake up

  She really is beside me

  Delirious joy

  I turn on the lights

  Light bursts forth for a hundredth of a second then goes out

  (a rattling lamp)

  I embrace her

  (I wake up: I am alone)

  No. 5

  December 1968

  The dentist

  At the end of a maze of covered walkways, a bit like in a souk, I arrive at a dentist’s office.

  The dentist is out but her son, a young boy, is there. He asks me to come back later, then changes his mind and tells me his mother will be back any moment.

  I leave. I run into a tiny woman, pretty and cheerful. It’s the dentist. She leads me to the waiting room. I tell her I don’t have time. She opens my mouth very wide and bursts into tears as she tells me that all my teeth are rotten but that it’s not worth treating them.

  My mouth, open wide, is immense. I have an almost palpable sensation of total rot.

  My mouth is so large, and the dentist so small, that I suspect she is going to put her whole head in my mouth.

  Later, I run through the shopping mall. I buy a three-burner gas stove that costs 26,000 francs and a 103-liter refrigerator.

  No. 6

  January 1969

  Farewell

  One day, I will tell her I am leaving her. She will call her daughter nearly immediately to say she is not going to Dampierre.

  Over the course of the telephone conversation, her pretty face will fall apart.

  No. 7

  January 1969

  On my old days

  Despite your certainty that you are still young, you must not be so young anymore, since two of your dearest friends are already dead and a third is dying …

  It was like those Flaubert letters: “We have buried Jules …” (or is it Edmond?).

  Who were those two dead friends? Wasn’t one of them Claude? Régis?

  No. 8

  September 1969

  In the métro

  After what might have been countless adventures, I manage to board the train just as it’s preparing to leave, as the dull black automatic doors are already closing.

  The compartment is long and narrow, almost empty. There is only an immensely tall woman on the other side of the car, lying over several seats—not across a row but down the length of the car, her feet roughly where I am and her head almost at the other end of the compartment.

  (Suddenly) I feel something (someone) gently running (a hand) through my hair.

  I am frightened.

  I shout.

  It is certainly not the woman, who seems even more than I am.

  No. 9

  September 1969

  Sinusitis

  I spoke with a doctor for a long time about my sinus infections.

  No. 10

  October 1969

  Writers

  In a store, or rather at a large carnival, something like the Fête de l’Humanité. There is a large crowd. We arrange to meet in one place and then another.

  I step out “to be introduced to some Soviet writers.” They greet me but then, to my great disappointment, nobody pays me any attention; everyone is listening to Armand Lanoux nearly immediately to say she is not going to Dampierre (I have never seen him before; he looks nothing like I imagined he would), who is speaking in Russian (which I understand without the slightest difficulty) about his ten books that have been translated in the USSR. I am shocked by the number ten, and I mentally correct it to something like “ten times the same thing”

  I belong to a group of hippies. We stop traffic on a national highway. We have surrounded a luxury car and are closing in on it, threateningly.