Les Amnesiques n'ont rien vecu d'Inoubliable, ou, mille Reponses a la Question "A quoi tu penses ?"

by Hervé Le Tellier

French

Genres: France

Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Hervé Le Tellier is a writer, journalist, mathematician, food critic, and teacher. He has been a member of the Oulipo group since 1992 and one of the “papous” of the famous France Culture radio show. He has published fifteen books of stories, essays, and novels, including Enough About Love (Other Press, 2011), The Sextine Chapel (Dalkey Archive Press, 2011), and A Thousand Pearls (Dalkey Archive Press, 2011).

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Penny for them? (An homage in imitation):

I was thinking how the rise of atheism will only help to serve capitalist bastardry.

I was thinking I cannot understand the logic of wanting to sire children.

I was thinking I have never been seriously impacted by a change of government.

I was thinking the more I read the harder it becomes to appreciate truly adequate craftsmanship.

I was thinking that day you impatiently asked me when were we going to get married, I knew we would never get married.

I was thinking how my ineptness at living seriously impaired your thirst for living.

I was thinking whether Christine Brooke-Rose might have had fun in the Oulipo, and whether her refusal to participate was a rather English and arch decision.

I was thinking how the malleability of the future should be embraced, provided one has reliable support beams.

I was thinking whether my attempts to become an intellectual will bring me as much happiness as perpetually clowning around.

I was thinking how I never wanted our relationship to evolve beyond the nostalgia of our first two years together.

I was thinking how killable sexual fantasies might be if their attendant smells were introduced.

I was thinking the more you write, the more the right words materialise, and how ironic it was that I changed the last word of this thought when transferring from notepad to laptop.

I was thinking I think of you far too often, when you probably think far less of me.

I was thinking that Will Self resembles Gogol’s remark from ‘The Nose’ of Ivan Ivanovich’s head as “a radish with the tail pointing down”.

I was thinking I only realised how violently I loved you when you closed the door.

I was thinking how other writers save pertinent quotes on their hard drives in the event they may one day need a fitting epigraph.

I was thinking how my working class upbringing will always leave me feeling a charlatan around literary people.

I was thinking how my girlfriend may be pretending to sleep as I write these pearls in bed beside her.

I was thinking when I told you I had published a story, your first enquiry was about the fee, not the content.

I was thinking how unapt it was my girlfriend said in her sleep: “no books for you today.”

I was thinking how depressing it is that my writing friends continue to produce prose in conventional forms, and how I must pretend to find their success pleasing, and how much more envious I would be if they published a formally inventive novel to acclaim.

I was thinking I will never have an agent.

I was thinking I will never make enough from writing to pay even two months rent.

I was thinking I could never render you or our time together unsentimentally in prose.

I was thinking how non-writers patronise writers struggling to support themselves with their work and how much pleasure is taken in their failing to do so.

I was thinking how an unwritten rule in social conversation is never to speak in sentences over 30 seconds long.

I was thinking I am unsure if I find Courtney Bartnett’s music irritating or infectious.

I was thinking how pathetic it is when I resent attractive female writers for being both attractive and talented.

I was thinking how almost everyone resents brazenly displayed intelligence.

I was thinking a friend of mine’s well-polished anecdotes might be rehearsed beforehand in the mirror.

I was thinking how casually you downgraded me from ‘lover’ to ‘flatmate’ in the space of two weeks.

I was thinking how a normal couple would have split up four years earlier.

I was thinking how important it is we can read together for hours in bed.

I was thinking I love my own company too much to sustain a long-term relationship.

I was thinking how fucking banal these thoughts might read to an outsider.

I was thinking how I have never met an unboring drunk.

I was thinking how little people care about social graces.

I was thinking I wasted £50 to watch, from a balcony a mile from the stage, a teensy Morrissey performing an uninspired set.

I was thinking how passionate love often struggles to transcend a fondness for shit novels and corny music.

I was thinking I will always be poor, and whether this should particularly bother me.

I was thinking only writers would have the arrogance to believe people might want to read a stream of their semi-varnished thoughts.

I was thinking I have 1325 Goodreads followers and hardly any of them wish to discuss books with me.

I was thinking to maintain most of my friendships, I have to engineer 90% of our meetings, and whether this reflects more on my desirability as friend then on my friends’ laziness for planning.

I was thinking of you, whoever you may be.

[B. Faye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Έξυπνο !

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

composed of a thousand different answers to the same question asked as many times ("penny for them?"), a thousand pearls (for a thousand pennies) is a charming glimpse into the profundity and banality of one man's random thoughts. hervé le tellier, french writer and member of oulipo (along with the book's translator, ian monk), has crafted a book that is at once charming, humorous, poignant, doleful, humble, witty, and self-effacing. a thousand pearls veers into the realm of both the lofty and the commonplace, relaying le tellier's thoughts on age, women, sex, love, death, war, career, books, and the many other random ideas that occur to one throughout the procession of days.

penny for them?

i was thinking how jazz has its duke, and its count, too, but only literature has its marquis.

penny for them?

i was thinking how "waking up at night and getting your eyes used to the dark" might be a definition of existence.

penny for them?

i was thinking that, just at the moment when the bomb exploded over their heads, the inhabitants of hiroshima were eating, taking a bath, phoning, or writing, just like me right now.

penny for them?

i was thinking that it's certainly not with a book like this that i'll win the prix goncourt.

penny for them?

i was thinking that the problem with smart people is that they waste too much time wondering if idiots are a little bit right, too.

penny for them?

i was thinking that if you read one book a week, that makes about three thousand in a lifetime, and they're inevitably not the right ones.

penny for them?

i was thinking that there'd be far fewer people at military parades if they also put trucks full of cadavers, followed by widows and orphans, just behind the tanks.

penny for them?

i was thinking that, what with inflation, these pearls must be worth far more than a penny each.

penny for them?

i was thinking that, sure, i feel great with you right here and now, but if you could shift over a bit, that would be great, too, because i've lost all feeling in my right arm.

penny for them?

i was thinking that i'm like everyone else, i like humanity more than i like people.

penny for them?

i was thinking that i often hesitate before speaking about myself, fearing that the person i'm talking to will then think it's okay to talk about themselves too.

penny for them?

i was thinking that, when i hold an open book and i can feel blood beating in the tips of my fingers, i can sometimes imagine that it's the book which is alive.

penny for them?

i was thinking that many people who are proud of having made it on their own would have done better to ask for help.

penny for them

i was thinking that it's worse not to do good consciously than to do ill without realizing it.

penny for them?

i was thinking that, personally, i prefer to live with remorse than regrets.

penny for them?

i was thinking that i'm not quite sure if this text, which obeys at least one constraint, mentions that constraint, in conformity with roubaud's principle.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Same kind of book as the David Markson anti-novel series and Evan Lavendar-Smith’s From Old Notebooks. Funnier than Markson. Less neurotic/philosophical than Lavendar-Smith. Very funny. I kept having to show lines to whoever was near.

[Katerina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Απολαυστικό! Το πιάνεις όποτε θέλεις, διαβάζεις μια σελίδα, το αφήνεις, διαβάζεις μια σκέψη δυνατά στους γονείς σου και γελάτε όλοι μαζί. Το ξαναπιάνεις όποτε θέλεις, σε όποιο σημείο θέλεις.

[Vizzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

First of all, I'll admit I began reading this book based ENTIRELY on the cover. I knew nothing of the author, nor what the plot was. It has been delightful to jump into the unknown and be quite pleased as a result.

I take a morning commute subway train, and before my morning caffeine fix find myself unable to concentrate on complex Kindle books. This is a go-to read for my sleepy mind.

[Charmaine Soh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was thinking (HAH get the reference?) how I really enjoyed this short and light read. A thousand thoughts from one man, I liked having a glimpse into someone's else's random thoughts 一 on sex, love, humanity, political situations, authors, everyday things, family, basically anything and everything.

Some made me feel happy, some sad, while I was also confused at some point in time, I found I could relate to quite a few thoughts that I myself have but never really could put down in words.

This book has shown me how amazing the human mind can be, that even the quirkiest thoughts can be shared between two strangers who live on two ends of the world, living totally different lives.

Overall a 4.5/5, the 0.5 was lost to repetitiveness and certain times of confusion.

[Priscilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bel "exercice" qui tient plus du jeu. Savoureux !

[Eloïse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pas en accord avec tout ce que contient ce livre.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

tellier's book of epigram/deep thoughts/funny twisty ideas about birth, living, loving, dying. and taking showers.
1000's of answers to the question "What are you thinking?" here is a very small sample
I was thinking how hard it is to become someone, without becoming someone else.

I was thinking that I’ve read too many books not to suspect, whenever an appealing sentence occurs to me, that it’s not by me.

I was thinking that you can put holy water in a battery, so long as god hasn’t forgotten to demineralize it first.

I was thinking how fitting it is that a writer, Edgar Allan Poe, rather than an astrophysicist, worked out why it’s dark at night.

I was thinking that it would be far more amusing if the Nobel Prize for Literature was called the Dynamite Prize for Literature.

[Arax Miltiadous · Rating 2 out of 5]

μερικές πολύ έξυπνες, μερικές πολύ κ��ισέ και ελλειπτικής φαντασίας και μερικές που μόνο ηλίθιες θα μπορούσαν να χαρακτηριστούν- απαντήσεις στην ερώτηση ' Τι σκέφτεσαι".
Σίγουρα αν δεν μου το χάριζαν, δεν θα υπήρχε περίπτωση να το αγόραζα, παρότι συμπαθώ ιδιαιτέρως τις εκδόσεις " Όπερα".

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75, rounded up to 4.

[Πάνος Τουρλής · Rating 4 out of 5]

Σκέφτομαι τι να πάρω για την υψοφοβία μου στο αεροπλάνο: xanax των 5 ή βαλεριάνα (φυσική λύση);
Πανέξυπνο βιβλίο, με καίρια υποχθόνια και between the lines σκέψεις και ατάκες.

[Jan Moens · Rating 5 out of 5]

8,5/10