A Void
Authors: Georges Perec
G
E O R G E S
P
E R E C
( 1 9 3 6 - 1 9 8 2 )
was the author of
Life
A User's Manual.
His output is bewilderingly varied in
form and style: it was his aim to write every kind of work
that it is possible to write in the modern world without
doing the same thing twice. He composed crossword
puzzles and poetry, radio plays and a book on the game of
Go, essays and palindromes, autobiography
(W or The
Memory of Childhood)
and straight narrative, such as
Things,
his prize-winning first novel. After writing
La
Disparition (A Void),
he took all his unused e's and
devoted them to a short text,
Les Revenentes,
in which e is
the only vowel employed.
G
I L B E R T
A
D A I R lived and worked in France for more
than ten years. In Great Britain his reputation as a writer is
based on three novels,
The Holy Innocents, Love and Death
on Long Island
and
The Death of the Author,
as also on two
sequels to classics of children's literature,
Alice Through the
Needle's Eye
and
Peter Pan and the Only Children.
He is a
regular columnist on the
Sunday Times
in London and has
published three books on aspects of contemporary culture.
By the same author
in English translation
L I F E A U S E R ' S M A N U A L
W OR T H E M E M O R Y OF C H I L D H O O D
T H I N G S
A M A N A S L E E P
" 5 3 D A Y S "
Georges Perec
A VOID
Translated from the French
by Gilbert Adair
H A R V I L L
An Imprint of
HarperCollins Publishers
First published in France with the title
La Disparition
by Editions Denoel, Paris, 1969
First published in Great Britain in 1994
by Harvill
an imprint of HarperCollinsPaWtjim
77-85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
This translation has been published with the
financial support of the French Ministry of
Culture and Communications.
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
© Editions Denoel 1969
English translation © HarperCollinsPublishers 1994
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0 00 271119 2 hardback
0 00 271118 4 paperback
Photoset in Linotron Galliard by
Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Redwood Books , Trowbridge, Wiltshire
C O N D I T I O N S O F S A L E
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or
otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it
is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
SUMMARY
I N T R O D U C T I O N
In which, as you will soon find out,
I A N T O N V O W L
1 Which at first calls to mind a probably familiar story of a
drunk man waking up with his brain in a whirl
3
2 In which luck, God's alias and alibi, plays a callous trick on a
suitor cast away on an island 12
3 Concluding with an immoral papacy's abolition and its
4 Which, notwithstanding a kind of McGujfin, has no ambition
to rival Hitchcock 37
6 Which, following a compilation of a polymath's random
jottings, will finish with a visit to a zoo
44
7
In which an unknown individual has it in for Moroccan
solicitors
57
8 In which you will find a word or two about a burial mound
that brought glory to Trajan
69
III D O U G L A S H A I G C L I F F O R D
9 In which an amazing thing occurs to an unwary basso profunda 81
10 Which will, I trust, gratify fanatics of Pindaric lyricism
93
11 Which will finish by arousing pity in a big shot
110
12 In which an umbilical ruby avails a bastard's anglicisation
122
13 On a fantastic charm that a choral work by Anton Dvorak
starts to cast on a billiard board
128
14 In which you will find a carp scornfully turning down a halva
fit for a king
140
I V O L G A M A V R O K H O R D A T O S
15 In which, untying a long string of fabrications and
falsifications, you will find out at last what sank that imposing
16 Which will furnish a probationary boost to a not always
almighty dollar ($)
163
17 In which you will know what Vladimir Ilich thought of
18 For which many will no doubt claim that it adds much that
is crucial to our story
174
19 On running a risk by asking for a fish
farci 184
20 Which, notwithstanding two paragraphs full of brio and
inspiration, will draw to an ominous conclusion
196
V A M A U R Y C O N S O N
21 In which, following a pithy summary of our plot so far, a fourth
fatality will occur, that of a man who has had a significant
part to play in this book
207
22 In which you will find an old family custom obliging a brainy
youth to finish his
Gradus ad Parnassum
with six killings
221
23 In which an anxious sibling turns a hoard of cash found in a
drum to fairly satisfactory account 238
24 Which, starting with a downcast husband, will finish with a
V I A R T H U R W I L B U R G S A V O R G N A N
25 Which contains, in its last paragraph, a highly significant
blank
265
26 Which, as you must know by now, is this book's last
273
P O S T S C R I P T
On that ambition, so to say, which lit its
author's lamp
281
In which, as you will soon find out, Damnation
has its origin
Today, by radio, and also on giant hoardings, a rabbi, an admiral
notorious for his links to Masonry, a trio of cardinals, a trio, too,
of insignificant politicians (bought and paid for by a rich and
corrupt Anglo-Canadian banking corporation), inform us all of
how our country now risks dying of starvation. A rumour, that's
my initial thought as I switch off my radio, a rumour or possibly
a hoax. Propaganda, I murmur anxiously — as though, just by
saying so, I might allay my doubts — typical politicians' propa-
ganda. But public opinion gradually absorbs it as a fact. Indi-
viduals start strutting around with stout clubs. "Food, glorious
food!" is a common cry (occasionally sung to Bart's music), with
ordinary hard-working folk harassing officials, both local and
national, and cursing capitalists and captains of industry. Cops
shrink from going out on night shift. In Macon a mob storms a
municipal building. In Rocadamour ruffians rob a hangar full of
foodstuffs, pillaging tons of tuna fish, milk and cocoa, as also a
vast quantity of corn - all of it, alas, totally unfit for human
consumption. Without fuss or ado, and naturally without any
sort of trial, an indignant crowd hangs 26 solicitors on a hastily
built scaffold in front of Nancy's law courts (this Nancy is a
town, not a woman) and ransacks a local journal, a disgusting
right-wing rag that is siding against it. Up and down this land
of ours looting has brought docks, shops and farms to a virtual
standstill.
Arabs, blacks and, as you might say, non-goyim fall victim to
vii
racist attacks, with pogroms forming in such outlying Parisian
suburbs as Drancy, Livry-Gargan, Saint-Paul, Villacoublay and
Clignancourt. And stray acts of brutality abound: an anonymous
tramp has his brains blown out just for a bit of moronic fun, and
a sacristan is callously spat upon — in public, too - whilst giving
absolution to a CRS man cut in half by a blow from a yataghan
(a Hungarian slicing tool, if you must know).
You'd kill your own kith and kin for a chunk of salami, your
cousin for a crust, your crony for a crouton and just about any-
body at all for a crumb.
On 6 April, from Saturday night until Sunday morning, 25
Molotov cocktails go off around town. Pilots bomb Orly airport.
Paris's most familiar landmarks burn down, and its inhabitants
look on in horror at a still blazing Alhambra, an
Institut
that is
nothing but a sad, smoking ruin, a Saint-Louis Hospital with all
its windows alight and gaily flaming away. From Montsouris to
Nation not a wall is intact.
Opposition MPs add insult to injury by baiting a now almost
suicidal ruling party, which, though obviously hurt by such an
affront to its dignity, has a fair stab at smoothing things out. But
whilst assassins start liquidating a handful of junior Quai d'Orsay
officials (23, or so it's said), a Dutch diplomat caught filching an
anchovy from a tub of fish is soon put paid to by an impromptu
stoning. And whilst an odiously smug and arrogant viscount in
shocking pink spats
(sic)
is laid into by Wagram's hoi polloi until
his skin is of a similarly shocking colour (his only fault, it turns
out, was to qualify starvation, to a dying man who had put his
hand out for a coin, as just too, too boring for words), in Raspail
a tall, blond Scandinavian, of actual Viking stock, riding a palo-
mino with blood pouring down its shanks and brandishing aloft
a long bow, starts firing arrows off at any local not to his liking.
A poor, starving, half-mad corporal purloins a bazooka and
mows down his battalion, commandant and all; and, on his
instant promotion to admiral by public acclaim, is just as instandy
