Le Condottière: Georges Perec’s Artistry
It seemed fitting that amid all the furore around the supposed disappearance of the
circumflex accent in French, the Reading Group at the Institut français was discussing a
recently discovered work by Georges Perec, author of lipogrammic crime novel parody La
Disparition. The book up for discussion, Le Condottière, had had a very Perec-like history.
Indeed, Perec considered it to be his first major work, but unfortunately it was not accepted
for publication, and was consequently stashed away in a cardboard box. It was not until
2012 that it finally came out in print, thirty years after the author’s death.
Thus, just like the other books we’d looked at this season, Le Condottière was published post
2010, but unlike the others, it had been written well before this in the late 1950s. What’s
particularly interesting is the fact that we now read this debut novel knowing what a
fascinating body of Perec went on to write. So we’re trying to find the clues for what was to
come, while also reading it within the context of the fifties. As such, it’s a strange object to
behold: clearly Perec’s writing is not as mature as in his ‘canonical’ works, yet a number of
the themes we have come to associate with his work are apparent. For instance, his
insistence with word play, the theme of the fake or contrived object – the story is in fact
about a forger who has an existential crisis and decides to give up forgery after murdering
his boss. Also, the narrator cum protagonist of Le Condottière is called Gaspard Winkler who
notably features in W ou le souvenir d’enfance (1975).
Perec translator David Bellos has argued that the novel is not really a product of its time, and
that it is only really the theme of forgery that ties it to contemporary events.
Here is the link: http://bit.ly/1U5XHYN .
However, I don’t think that it’s completely out step with the other literature
being written during the same period. For instance, Winkler has a form of existential crisis
and set of interrogations that link Perec with the work of Camus or Sartre – albeit as a
counterpoint. Also, Perec plays with the codes of the crime novel, just as the film-makers of
the nouvelle vague were beginning to do. And like the works of the nouvelle vague, it is self-
referential.
In our session, the question of identity was discussed at length as was the metaphor of the
forger. The session was particularly lively as everyone wanted to grapple with Perec’s work
and establish interesting parallels with La Carte et le Territoire by Michel Houellebecq, which
had also featured a killing. And thus, with an increasing number of bodies lying on our
literary floor, it’s time to bring on Fred Vargas’s L’Armée furieuse, which will be up for
discussion on 10 March.
Dominic Glynn is Lecturer in French at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR).