Perec I Remember

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80533-460-6
Verlag: Pushkin Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

'I remember hula hoops.''I remember Hermes handbags, with their tiny padlocks.''I remember that Stendhal liked spinach.''I remember that I dreamed of one day having all 57 varieties of Heinz.'Both an affectionate portrait of mid-century Paris and a daring memoir, Georges Perec's I Remember is now available for the first time in English, with an introduction by David Bellos.In 480 numbered statements, all beginning identically with 'I remember', Perec records a stream of individual memories of a childhood in post-war France, while posing wider questions about memory and nostalgia. As playful and puzzling as the best of his novels, I Remember is an ode to life: the ordinary, the extraordinary, and the sometimes trivial, as seen through the eyes of the irreplaceable Georges Perec.

Georges Perec, born in Paris in 1936, was a pioneering French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. Orphaned from an early age, many of his works deal with absence, loss and identity, often through word play. He later became an eminent member of the experimental Oulipo group. He died in 1982.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Perec, Georges

Weitere Mitwirkende

Terry, Philip

Bellos, David

Leseproben

1

I remember Reda Caire performing live at the Porte de Saint-Cloud cinema.

2

I remember that my uncle had an 11cv with the registration number 7070 RL2.

3

I remember the cinema Les Agriculteurs, and the leather armchairs at the Caméra, and the twin seats at the Panthéon.

4

I remember Lester Young at the Club Saint-Germain; he wore a blue silk suit with a red silk lining.

5

I remember Ronconi, Brambilla, and Jésus Moujica, and Zaaf, the perennial red lantern.

6

I remember that Art Tatum called a piece “Sweet Lorraine” because he had been in Lorraine during the 1914–18 war.

7

I remember “clackers.”

8

I remember a one-armed Englishman who beat everyone at ping-pong at Château d’Oex.

9

I remember Ploum ploum tra la la.

10

I remember that a friend of my cousin Henri spent all day in his dressing-gown when he was studying for his exams.

11

I remember the Citizen of the World Garry Davis tapping away on his typewriter on the Place du Trocadéro.

12

I remember games of barbu at Les Petites-Dalles.

13

I remember the Three Sees: Metz, Toul, and Verdun.

14

I remember the yellow bread there was for a while after the war.

15

I remember the earliest pinball machines, called flippers in French. But they didn’t have any flippers.

16

I remember old issues of L’Illustration.

17

I remember the pick-up needles made of steel, and ones made of bamboo, which you had to sharpen on an abrasive strip after every record.

18

I remember that in Monopoly, Avenue de Breteuil is green, Avenue Henri Martin red, and Avenue Mozart orange.

19

I remember:

Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten

Das Ich so traurig bin.

And:

I wander lonely as a cloud

When all at once I see a crowd

A — ? — of golden daffodils.

20

I remember that Junot was duc d’Abrantès.

21

I remember:

Grégoire and Amédée

Present

Grégoire and Amédée

in

Grégoire and Amédée

(and Furax too, of course).

22

I remember one day my cousin Henri visited a cigarette factory and brought back a cigarette as long as five normal ones.

23

I remember that after the war you almost never came across chocolat viennois or chocolat liégois, and that for a long time I got them mixed up.

24

I remember that the first L.P. I heard was the Concerto for Woodwind and Orchestra by Cimarosa.

25

I remember a school prefect from Corsica who was called Flack, “like German ack-ack.”

26

I remember “High Life” and “Naja.”

27

I remember getting an autograph from Louison Bobet at the Parc des Princes.

28

I remember that for a number of years, the dirtiest expression that I knew was tremper la soupe; I’d seen it in a dictionary of slang that I’d read in secret. I’ve never heard anyone actually use it and I’m no longer very sure what it means (no doubt a variant on “reaming”).

29

I remember Les Quatre Fils Aymon and another tale called Jean de Paris.

30

I remember the Thursday afternoon screenings at the Royal-Passy cinema. There was one film called Les Trois Desperados, and another, Les Cinq Balles d’Argent, which ran for several episodes.

31

I remember that one of the first times I went to the theatre my cousin got the wrong playhouse – mixing up the Odéon and the Salle Richelieu – and instead of a classic tragedy, I saw L’Inconnue d’Arras by Armand Salacrou.

32

I remember that the real name of Lord Mountbatten was Battenberg.

33

I remember scarves made out of parachute silk.

34

I remember the cinema in Avenue de Messine.

35

I remember the Cerdan-Dauthuille match.

36

I remember that the city of Algiers stretches from Pointe Pescade to Cap Matifou.

37

I remember that at the end of the war, my cousin Henri and I marked the advance of the Allied armies with little flags bearing the names of the generals commanding the armies or the army corps. I’ve forgotten the names of almost all of these generals (Bradley, Patton, Zhukov, etc.) but I remember the name of General de Larminat.

38

I remember that Michel Legrand made his debut under the name of “Big Mike.”

39

I remember that a 400-metre sprinter was caught stealing in the cloakrooms of a sports stadium (and that, to avoid going to prison, he had to sign up for Indochina).

40

I remember the day Japan capitulated.

41

I remember a piece by Earl Bostic that was called “Flamingo.”

42

I remember that I used to wonder if the American actor William Bendix was the son of the washing machines.

43

I remember Albinoni’s “Adagio.”

44

I remember Jean Lec’s radio programme, Le Grenier de Montmartre.

45

I remember the satisfaction I felt when doing a Latin translation if I came across a whole sentence ready-made in Gaffiot.

46

I remember the period when the fashion was for black shirts.

47

I remember crystal radios.

48

I remember I started a collection of matchboxes and one of cigarette packets.

49

I remember that Edith Piaf was responsible for giving their first breaks to Les Compagnons de la Chanson, Eddie Constantine, and Yves Montand.

50

I remember the period when Sacha Distel was a jazz guitarist.

51

I remember the buses with a platform at the back: when you wanted to get off at the next stop, you had to press a buzzer, but neither too close to the preceding stop, nor too close to the stop in question.

52

I remember the time when a (ten-storey) building that had just been completed at the bottom of Avenue de la Sœur-Rosalie was the tallest in Paris and passed for a skyscraper.

53

I remember I was very disappointed to learn that the actress Maggie McNamara only acted in The Moon is Blue. Later, I found that she was the daughter of the Secretary for Defence.

54

I remember that Voltaire is the anagram of “Arouet L(e) J(eune),” writing V instead of U and I instead of J.

55

I remember that Raoul Lévy went bankrupt trying to make a film spectacular called Marco Polo.

56

I remember that it was Sacha Guitry who came up with the slogan “Eleska’s exquisite.”

57

I remember that Christian Jaque divorced Renée Faure in order to marry Martine Carol.

58

I remember that the racing driver Sommer was nicknamed “the wild boar of the Ardennes.”

59

I remember GARAP.

60

I remember G-7 taxis with glass partitions and jump seats.

61

I remember that Les Noctambules and Le Quartier Latin in Rue Champollion were theatres.

62

I remember scoubidous.

63

I remember “Dumpitty-dum, dumpitti-do, buy Dop Dop Dop Shampoo.”

64

I remember how enjoyable it was, at boarding school, to be ill and to go to the sick room.

65

I remember that at the time of its launch, the weekly paper Le Hérisson (“Le Hérisson tickles you pink!”) put on a big show during which, in particular, several boxing matches took place.

66

I remember an operetta featuring the Frères Jacques, and Irène Hilda, Jacques Pils, Armand Mestral and Maryse Martin. (There was another one, a few years later, also featuring the Frères Jacques, called La Belle Arabelle; it might have been in that one, and not in the first, that Armand Mestral appeared.)

67

I remember that I became, if not good, at least a little bit less hopeless in English, from the day I was the only one in the class to understand that “earthenware” meant poterie.

68

I remember when to get a new car you had to go on a waiting list for months, even a year or more.

69

I remember that at Villard-de-Lans I found it very funny that a refugee called Norman lived with a peasant called Breton. A few years later, in Paris, I laughed out loud when I heard that a restaurant called Le Lamartine was famous for its chateaubriands.

70

I remember the “True or False?”, “Did You Know?”, and “Strange but True” columns in children’s comics.

71

I remember Jean Bretonnière when he sang Toi ma p’tit’ folie.

72

I remember the live acts that used to take place at the Gaumont-Palace. I also remember the Gaumont-Palace.

73

I remember the difficulty they had digging out the foundations for the Drugstore Saint-Germain.

74

I remember the wooden man at the Galeries Barbès.

75

I remember La Minute de Saint-Granier.

76

I remember the motor-paced racing cyclists at the Parc des Princes.

77...