What do you think?
Rate this book
Three By Perec
Three works of short fiction by Georges Perec. “One of the most singular literary personalities in the world.”―Italo Calvino
Georges Perec’s mastery of absurdist fiction are on full display in this collection. As Richard Eder in The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Perec’s artistry has achieved a perfect balance between allure and imponderability.”
The novella The Exeter Text contains all those e’s that were omitted from his novel, A Void (Perec hated waste) and no other vowel. In Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard? we meet Sergeant Henri Pollak and his vehicle that carries him between Vincennes and Montparnasse. A Gallery Portrait is about a portrait, called “A Gallery Portrait,” of the Pittsburgh beer baron Hermann Raffke sitting in front of his portrait which depicts Raffke sitting in front of his portrait.
Mind-bending short fiction from a 20th century master.
Georges Perec’s mastery of absurdist fiction are on full display in this collection. As Richard Eder in The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Perec’s artistry has achieved a perfect balance between allure and imponderability.”
The novella The Exeter Text contains all those e’s that were omitted from his novel, A Void (Perec hated waste) and no other vowel. In Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard? we meet Sergeant Henri Pollak and his vehicle that carries him between Vincennes and Montparnasse. A Gallery Portrait is about a portrait, called “A Gallery Portrait,” of the Pittsburgh beer baron Hermann Raffke sitting in front of his portrait which depicts Raffke sitting in front of his portrait.
Mind-bending short fiction from a 20th century master.
187 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1996
6 people are currently reading
296 people want to read
About the author
Georges Perec
165 books1,620 followersGeorges Perec was a highly-regarded French novelist, filmmaker, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. Many of his novels and essays abound with experimental wordplay, lists, and attempts at classification, and they are usually tinged with melancholy.
Born in a working-class district of Paris, Perec was the only son of Icek Judko and Cyrla (Schulewicz) Peretz, Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s. He was a distant relative of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz.
Perec's first novel, Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties) was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.
In 1978, Perec won the prix Médicis for Life: A User's Manual (French title, La Vie mode d'emploi), possibly his best-known work. The 99 chapters of this 600 page piece move like a knight's tour of a chessboard around the room plan of a Paris apartment building, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.
Cantatrix Sopranica L. is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the "yelling reaction" provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All the references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes, e.g. "(Karybb et Scyla, 1973)".
Perec is also noted for his constrained writing: his 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is a lipogram, written without ever using the letter "e". It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void (1994). The silent disappearance of the letter might be considered a metaphor for the Jewish experience during the Second World War. Since the name 'Georges Perec' is full of 'e's, the disappearance of the letter also ensures the author's own 'disappearance'.
His novella Les revenentes (1972) is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used. This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes. An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three.
It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far (those containing both "e" and a vowel other than "e").
W ou le souvenir d'enfance, (W, or, the Memory of Childhood, 1975) is a semi-autobiographical work which is hard to classify. Two alternating narratives make up the volume: one, a fictional outline of a totalitarian island country called "W", patterned partly on life in a concentration camp; and the second, descriptions of childhood. Both merge towards the end when the common theme of the Holocaust is explained.
Perec was a heavy smoker throughout his life, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1981. He died the following year in Ivry-sur-Seine at only forty-five-years old. His ashes are held at the columbarium of the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
David Bellos wrote an extensive biography of Perec: Georges Perec: A Life in Words, which won the Académie Goncourt's bourse for biography in 1994.
Born in a working-class district of Paris, Perec was the only son of Icek Judko and Cyrla (Schulewicz) Peretz, Polish Jews who had emigrated to France in the 1920s. He was a distant relative of the Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz.
Perec's first novel, Les Choses (Things: A Story of the Sixties) was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1965.
In 1978, Perec won the prix Médicis for Life: A User's Manual (French title, La Vie mode d'emploi), possibly his best-known work. The 99 chapters of this 600 page piece move like a knight's tour of a chessboard around the room plan of a Paris apartment building, describing the rooms and stairwell and telling the stories of the inhabitants.
Cantatrix Sopranica L. is a spoof scientific paper detailing experiments on the "yelling reaction" provoked in sopranos by pelting them with rotten tomatoes. All the references in the paper are multi-lingual puns and jokes, e.g. "(Karybb et Scyla, 1973)".
Perec is also noted for his constrained writing: his 300-page novel La disparition (1969) is a lipogram, written without ever using the letter "e". It has been translated into English by Gilbert Adair under the title A Void (1994). The silent disappearance of the letter might be considered a metaphor for the Jewish experience during the Second World War. Since the name 'Georges Perec' is full of 'e's, the disappearance of the letter also ensures the author's own 'disappearance'.
His novella Les revenentes (1972) is a complementary univocalic piece in which the letter "e" is the only vowel used. This constraint affects even the title, which would conventionally be spelt Revenantes. An English translation by Ian Monk was published in 1996 as The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex in the collection Three.
It has been remarked by Jacques Roubaud that these two novels draw words from two disjoint sets of the French language, and that a third novel would be possible, made from the words not used so far (those containing both "e" and a vowel other than "e").
W ou le souvenir d'enfance, (W, or, the Memory of Childhood, 1975) is a semi-autobiographical work which is hard to classify. Two alternating narratives make up the volume: one, a fictional outline of a totalitarian island country called "W", patterned partly on life in a concentration camp; and the second, descriptions of childhood. Both merge towards the end when the common theme of the Holocaust is explained.
Perec was a heavy smoker throughout his life, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1981. He died the following year in Ivry-sur-Seine at only forty-five-years old. His ashes are held at the columbarium of the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
David Bellos wrote an extensive biography of Perec: Georges Perec: A Life in Words, which won the Académie Goncourt's bourse for biography in 1994.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 2, 2020
“What a marvelous invention man is! He can blow on his hands to warm them up, and blow on his soup to cool it down.”
― Georges Perec, Things: A Story of the Sixties; A Man Asleep
Three by Perec is a collection of three novellas written by the outstanding French novelist Georges Perec, translated by Ian Monk. For the purposes of this review, I will focus on the first novella in the collection, Which Moped with Chome-plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?
For those who are unfamiliar with Georges Perec (1936-1982), he is one of the most amazing writers of the twentieth century, author of A Void, a three-hundred page novel written without using the letter "e" - yes, believe it or not, he pulled off this remarkable feat in French and translator Gilbert Adair pulled it off in English.
Equally astonishing, Life: A User's Manual, a five-hundred page masterpiece that can be viewed in terms of an intricate jigsaw puzzle (puzzles being one of Perec's passions).
And Georges Perec didn't stop there. We have a number of other literary jewels, including not only novels but stories, essays, scripts, plays, reviews and collections of crossword puzzles. Many are the times a reader is reminded of such word gamers as Raymond Queneau and Vladimir Nabokov.
So, looking at Which Moped with Chome-plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard?, the storyline is as simple as simple can be: One Sergeant Henri Pollak divides his time between sergeantly military life in Vincennes and bohemian civilian life in Montparnasse, living among his books, girlfriend and mates, one of his mates being the narrator of the tale. When a buck private by the name of Karamanlis or Karawak or Karawash or Karapet (or a dozen other similar names used by the narrator) is called up to go fight in Algeria, he asks Henri Pollak to run over his foot with a truck so as to escape combat. Henri vacillates and, in turn, asks his mates for help. The story moves from there.
But the author gives us much, much more than a simple start to finish story. Beginning with the novella's first word and not letting up until the last period, Georges Perec bids us join him in his game of linguistic and narrative whimsy, moving from commonly spoken words to more arcane and obscure vocabulary, words such as loxodromic, metaphormose, ventripotent, cavil, saucisson, quincunex, misopaedist and hexastich. And what applies to words also applies to turns of phrases, sentence structure, syntax and most other forms of language - mix and match, all written with the lightest of touches.
Here is another example of Perec's agile touch: Midway through the novella, the narrator speaks directly to the reader, "Any reader who wishes to take a break here can. We have, my word, come to what the best authors (Jules Sandeau, Victor Margueritte, Henri Lavedan, even Alain Robbe-Grillet in his latest, Lenten Christmas) call a natural turning point." Fortunately, the reader is having so much fun no break is really needed.
But the story also has a serious undertone. Why pack off to a war in Algeria, a war that is questionable and perhaps absurd? With the mention of Algeria and a suggestion of absurdity there is a hint of Albert Camus and existentialism. However, this being the case, there isn't a trace of the hard-boiled writing style found in The Stranger; rather, the author engages a subject with serious political and philosophic implications with his signature lightness and agility.
This novella doesn't end with the last sentence; rather, to add a tasty icing to the linguistic cake, the author has created an Index with over one-hundred-fifty listings. And for a dash more whimsy, "Index" is the first word in the sentence: "Index of the ornamentations and flowers of rhetric or, to be more precise, of the metabolas and parataxes which the author believes he has identified in the text which you have just read." As an example of the listings, here are words starting with "L": Lambdacism, Leptology, Litotes, Logodiarrhe and words starting with the letter "O": Onamatopoeia, Oratio obliqua, Otiose epitet, Oxymoron. Then the index stops at the letter "P" with a simple -- etc, etc, etc - offering the reader an occasion to create one's own list with "Q" to "Z" words.
Thank you, Georges! Please accept this invitation to join GP in the game of language as endless discovery and delight.
August 18, 2020
This volume collects together three of Perec's brief novellas, in accordance with a wish expressed shortly before death robbed us of his genius. Satisfyingly, the texts date from the early, middle and late phases of Perec's published writing career. He's a contender for my favourite writer ('Life a User's Manual' is my favourite novels) but that doesn't mean I have to be uncritical...
I read 'The Exeter Text' some fifteen or so years ago. It's Perec's univocaliic in E, counterpart to his epsilon-minus lipogram, 'La Disparation'. The rest de le reevew rendered threw ewes des lettres 'E' sewlement? No, that would be too tiresome, and to be honest, that's what I found with 'The Exeter Text'. It's fiendishly cunning but not that rewarding to read. En experement tew menny, me beleeves...
The spectacularly and misleadingly titled 'Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard' is much more readable, a jolly jaunt through a plot about helping a conscript to avoid being sent to war in Algeria, with metafictional and Rabelaisian elements. The underlying seriousness of the topic is underlined with brilliant constraint through passing mention of another conscript who "already had a red hole in his right side". It ends with a typically Perecquian "Index... of the ornamentations and flowers of rhetoric ... in the text which you have just read."
'A Gallery Portrait', Perec's last completed piece (frustratingly, '53 Days' remained unfinished) is the strongest of the three, the tale of an artistic hoax, linking it to Perec's first and last full-length fictions. The portrait itself and others at the 1913 Pittsburgh Exhibition are described with faux-academic rigour, in the manner of an art forger seeking to fob off a fake to its would-be buyer. The pharaoh-style entombment of the portrait's patron is just one fantastical set-piece to enjoy in this pleasing novella, a fitting coda to Perec's masterwork, 'La Vie Mode d'emploi'.
I read 'The Exeter Text' some fifteen or so years ago. It's Perec's univocaliic in E, counterpart to his epsilon-minus lipogram, 'La Disparation'. The rest de le reevew rendered threw ewes des lettres 'E' sewlement? No, that would be too tiresome, and to be honest, that's what I found with 'The Exeter Text'. It's fiendishly cunning but not that rewarding to read. En experement tew menny, me beleeves...
The spectacularly and misleadingly titled 'Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard' is much more readable, a jolly jaunt through a plot about helping a conscript to avoid being sent to war in Algeria, with metafictional and Rabelaisian elements. The underlying seriousness of the topic is underlined with brilliant constraint through passing mention of another conscript who "already had a red hole in his right side". It ends with a typically Perecquian "Index... of the ornamentations and flowers of rhetoric ... in the text which you have just read."
'A Gallery Portrait', Perec's last completed piece (frustratingly, '53 Days' remained unfinished) is the strongest of the three, the tale of an artistic hoax, linking it to Perec's first and last full-length fictions. The portrait itself and others at the 1913 Pittsburgh Exhibition are described with faux-academic rigour, in the manner of an art forger seeking to fob off a fake to its would-be buyer. The pharaoh-style entombment of the portrait's patron is just one fantastical set-piece to enjoy in this pleasing novella, a fitting coda to Perec's masterwork, 'La Vie Mode d'emploi'.
November 28, 2012
"Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard": 5/5 stars.
How could anyone who reveres rhetoric, loves language, and wallows gloriously in word games not take heart in this terse tale? This short story might madden anybody who willfully gainsays word games, loathes language, and reviles rhetoric. It's a story that has words and a heart. The heart, or deeper meaning, lies behind (or within or simultaneously both or neither at the same time)the words which tell (or are) the story. Now that you know the meat (or heart) of the story, reader, "I shall hey presto set about drawing many an entertaining and mind-boggling digression: but this is a serious moment and I must press on: Oh! Literature! How many torments, how much torture must your sacrosanct love of continuity inflict on us with?" (22). For a class in grad school, I (Adam, not someone from the story) had to buy A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms . This 200 pager covers all of the obscure rhetorical terms that nearly no one (I'd wager) has ever heard of: from abbaser, or "Puttenham's term for Tapinosis" to zeugma, which, because of this book ( A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms ), became one of my favorite not-so-commonly used rhetorical terms. For one assignment, we (Adam, that is, I, and the other students in his class, that is, my class) had to take any page of the book we were reading--something, I believe, by Virginia Woolf, of whom I'm not a big fan (so shoot me)--and both identify the usage of one of these obscure terms and write an analysis of how it enhanced the text. Because it was like a word-find (of sorts), I really enjoyed it, and it led me to wonder how often these terms are actually applied in practice, often, most likely, completely unbeknownst to the actual author. Well--to return from this digression--Perec in "Which Moped..." is completely "beknownst," for he includes an index of the obscure terms he uses in the story and identifies on which page he has used them. That, my friends, is quite impressive! That,amigos, is also not something I am going to do herein. Perhaps it is because I want you,compatriots, to have the fun of finding out for yourselves what grammatical gems, what linguistic lavishes, what rhetorical rarities I have so cleverly commanded. Perhaps, though,..., it is because I myself haven't the feintest [sic] idea.
"The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex": 4.5/5 sters.
“The Exeter Text”’s not the bee’s knees er the cet's pejemehs. Yet eet's steel en encredeble feet. Well, reely me feels the effect’ve the “e”s keeps eh speed ‘n’ style never seen. Eet's peerless, beleeve yew me. The text reveels extreme cleverness by Perec ‘n’ begets verse, er eh nearly versey feel, yet it engenders, even breeds, severe resentment chez the reeder. Perchence "resentment" (en the preveeyes sentence) be repeeled ‘n’ “regrets” redeems the sentence, the reeder (me) thenks. Texts thet teem w/”e”s perplex eesyly ‘n’ the news (en ehther werds, heppenyngs: e.g. expeseshen,reyseng ectshen, cleymex, fellyng ectshen, en kenclewshen)‘n’ theme seem messy, mystefyng even. Certeen teymes, the text ferments spleen when reedyng when cemplete cenfewshen preveeles. Cheyrecters es well ken kehnfewze eesly. Nevertheless, Perec’s text cements the legend he's erned, expresses the enermety emblemetec ev hes entellect. Perec’s the best. He's eh freeken' geneeyes.
Eeeeeek. Me needs eh beer. Sheeeeeeet!
"A Gallery Portrait": 4/5 stars.
Mimesis.
A painting of other paintings within paintings within paintings within paintings within paintings.
A gallery modeled after a picture portraying an art collector's gallery.
Death imitating art.
Autobiography imitating life.
A photograph and memory representing a painting of paintings.
Real people (who are fictional characters in the story) painted into paintings of other famous people.
Forgeries of famous paintings.
Everything "as fake as most of the details in this fictional tale, invented solely for the pleasure--and the thrill--of deception" (188).
Mimesis vs. Reality. Images vs. Images of images.
(Four stars because too much was just lengthy listing. Supposedly, according to the introduction, the story is made up of "fragments of other texts, allusions to other works, and of personal nods to fiends and to places associated with them" [125]. Unfortunately, for me the lists were just lists.)
How could anyone who reveres rhetoric, loves language, and wallows gloriously in word games not take heart in this terse tale? This short story might madden anybody who willfully gainsays word games, loathes language, and reviles rhetoric. It's a story that has words and a heart. The heart, or deeper meaning, lies behind (or within or simultaneously both or neither at the same time)the words which tell (or are) the story. Now that you know the meat (or heart) of the story, reader, "I shall hey presto set about drawing many an entertaining and mind-boggling digression: but this is a serious moment and I must press on: Oh! Literature! How many torments, how much torture must your sacrosanct love of continuity inflict on us with?" (22). For a class in grad school, I (Adam, not someone from the story) had to buy A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms . This 200 pager covers all of the obscure rhetorical terms that nearly no one (I'd wager) has ever heard of: from abbaser, or "Puttenham's term for Tapinosis" to zeugma, which, because of this book ( A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms ), became one of my favorite not-so-commonly used rhetorical terms. For one assignment, we (Adam, that is, I, and the other students in his class, that is, my class) had to take any page of the book we were reading--something, I believe, by Virginia Woolf, of whom I'm not a big fan (so shoot me)--and both identify the usage of one of these obscure terms and write an analysis of how it enhanced the text. Because it was like a word-find (of sorts), I really enjoyed it, and it led me to wonder how often these terms are actually applied in practice, often, most likely, completely unbeknownst to the actual author. Well--to return from this digression--Perec in "Which Moped..." is completely "beknownst," for he includes an index of the obscure terms he uses in the story and identifies on which page he has used them. That, my friends, is quite impressive! That,amigos, is also not something I am going to do herein. Perhaps it is because I want you,compatriots, to have the fun of finding out for yourselves what grammatical gems, what linguistic lavishes, what rhetorical rarities I have so cleverly commanded. Perhaps, though,..., it is because I myself haven't the feintest [sic] idea.
"The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex": 4.5/5 sters.
“The Exeter Text”’s not the bee’s knees er the cet's pejemehs. Yet eet's steel en encredeble feet. Well, reely me feels the effect’ve the “e”s keeps eh speed ‘n’ style never seen. Eet's peerless, beleeve yew me. The text reveels extreme cleverness by Perec ‘n’ begets verse, er eh nearly versey feel, yet it engenders, even breeds, severe resentment chez the reeder. Perchence "resentment" (en the preveeyes sentence) be repeeled ‘n’ “regrets” redeems the sentence, the reeder (me) thenks. Texts thet teem w/”e”s perplex eesyly ‘n’ the news (en ehther werds, heppenyngs: e.g. expeseshen,reyseng ectshen, cleymex, fellyng ectshen, en kenclewshen)‘n’ theme seem messy, mystefyng even. Certeen teymes, the text ferments spleen when reedyng when cemplete cenfewshen preveeles. Cheyrecters es well ken kehnfewze eesly. Nevertheless, Perec’s text cements the legend he's erned, expresses the enermety emblemetec ev hes entellect. Perec’s the best. He's eh freeken' geneeyes.
Eeeeeek. Me needs eh beer. Sheeeeeeet!
"A Gallery Portrait": 4/5 stars.
Mimesis.
A painting of other paintings within paintings within paintings within paintings within paintings.
A gallery modeled after a picture portraying an art collector's gallery.
Death imitating art.
Autobiography imitating life.
A photograph and memory representing a painting of paintings.
Real people (who are fictional characters in the story) painted into paintings of other famous people.
Forgeries of famous paintings.
Everything "as fake as most of the details in this fictional tale, invented solely for the pleasure--and the thrill--of deception" (188).
Mimesis vs. Reality. Images vs. Images of images.
(Four stars because too much was just lengthy listing. Supposedly, according to the introduction, the story is made up of "fragments of other texts, allusions to other works, and of personal nods to fiends and to places associated with them" [125]. Unfortunately, for me the lists were just lists.)
October 16, 2015
Which Moped With Chrome-plated Handlebars At The Back Of The Yard?
Early novella, and it shows, which isn't necessarily bad; this is Perec just finding his voice after his debut Things, taking a simple story of a soldier trying to get out of going to Alger and bombarding it with rhetorical and narrative devices until the story groans, creaks and gasps for breath. A bit too in love with its own quirkiness at times - it's not just the plot that reminds me of Alice's Restaurant - but good fun.
The Exeter Text
Yep, the novella written using no other vowels than all the E:s left over after he finished A Void. I was almost prepared to dismiss this as unreadable, on first glance I just saw eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee all over every page, but it's actually not bad. Yes, the story is far more of a dancing bear (ie you don't expect the bear to dance well, but it's impressive that he dances at all) than A Void, there are bits that are sillier than others and I obviously can't vouch for how faithful the translation or even the concept of it is, but it's intriguing to see how far Perec (& transl) can stretch the rules of grammar and pronunciation to werk, and I have to love that Perec starts out with such a perverse (hmmm...?) high concept and then actually has it turn into pure pernegrephee by the end.
A Gallery Portrait
Brilliant little slight of hand, which may or may not be a companion piece to Life: A User's Manual but stands (or rather hangs) fine on its own. A private art collector holds a show of all his collected paintings, centered around a newly commissioned painting of himself sitting among the same paintings hung on the other walls... then that painting is destroyed, the others removed from the public eye to not suffer the same fate, and over the years their reputation and possibly value climb as a result, and the story increasingly takes the form of a catalogue... but wait, was that really what happened? Perec the forger is in perfect form, playing with images and ascribed meanings before pulling the other one.
Early novella, and it shows, which isn't necessarily bad; this is Perec just finding his voice after his debut Things, taking a simple story of a soldier trying to get out of going to Alger and bombarding it with rhetorical and narrative devices until the story groans, creaks and gasps for breath. A bit too in love with its own quirkiness at times - it's not just the plot that reminds me of Alice's Restaurant - but good fun.
The Exeter Text
Yep, the novella written using no other vowels than all the E:s left over after he finished A Void. I was almost prepared to dismiss this as unreadable, on first glance I just saw eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee all over every page, but it's actually not bad. Yes, the story is far more of a dancing bear (ie you don't expect the bear to dance well, but it's impressive that he dances at all) than A Void, there are bits that are sillier than others and I obviously can't vouch for how faithful the translation or even the concept of it is, but it's intriguing to see how far Perec (& transl) can stretch the rules of grammar and pronunciation to werk, and I have to love that Perec starts out with such a perverse (hmmm...?) high concept and then actually has it turn into pure pernegrephee by the end.
A Gallery Portrait
Brilliant little slight of hand, which may or may not be a companion piece to Life: A User's Manual but stands (or rather hangs) fine on its own. A private art collector holds a show of all his collected paintings, centered around a newly commissioned painting of himself sitting among the same paintings hung on the other walls... then that painting is destroyed, the others removed from the public eye to not suffer the same fate, and over the years their reputation and possibly value climb as a result, and the story increasingly takes the form of a catalogue... but wait, was that really what happened? Perec the forger is in perfect form, playing with images and ascribed meanings before pulling the other one.
Read
March 10, 2025"A Gallery Portrait" as an Elucidation of Life A User's Manual
-
What's of interest here is the relation between two books Georges Perec wrote late in his career. He pointed out that "A Gallery Portrait" (Un cabinet d'amateur) makes reference to all the rooms of Life A User's Manual, implying it is a sort of extended set of notes or comments on the earlier book. Given his interest in mises-en-abyme and intertextual references—every one of the 99 chapters in Life A User's Manual contains a reference to one of his own earlier works—it's interesting to try to understand what he thought he was constructing by writing "A Gallery Portrait" just after Life A User's Manual.
(First a bit of nomenclature, since it gets confusing: A Gallery Portrait is the name of a painting, described in this book of the same name. I'll put the book in quotation marks as if it is an essay: "A Gallery Portrait." A Gallery Portrait is a scene of a man contemplating a painting collection. On the walls in the painting is the painting itself, including the man looking at his paintings. This is not illustrated, but the German edition has a depiction of it painted by Isabelle Vernay-Levèque. That painting is reproduced several times online, but as far as I can see all those are photos of the reproduction on the cover of the German edition. Perec did not intend any illustrations to be part of his book.)
David Bellos describes "A Gallery Portrait" as a kind of jeu d'esprit, full of private allusions, which should be read just for the pleasure of the mystery. He says this both in his biography of Perec and in his introduction to the translation in this book. It's a strangely insufficient response, especially from a person who knows Perec's self-imposed constraints and games, and is aware that nothing in Perec happens simply for the pleasure of an unsolvable enigma. This was Perec's last completed book, and as Bellos says it plays on themes in Life A User's Manual, making the two a sort of mismatched pair—though he doesn't elaborate on what sort of pair they make, or what might be gained by reading the two together.
Art history in "A Gallery Portrait"
The book's own description of its purpose comes at the end, when the narrator says the many art historical descriptions are there for the "pleasure" and "thrill... of deception." Almost all of this book is a recital of art historical problems of identification, provenance, and iconography, and Perec's idea seems to have been to entertain his readers with plausible-sounding accounts of fictional paintings assigned to actual artists.
I find this completely boring. It's old-fashioned art history. I'm biased, since I'm an art historian, but the discussions of authenticity, subject matter, and provenance are the sorts of things that interested art historians from c. 1880 to sometime between the wars, and the roster of artists—I know almost all of them—is a cross-section of European taste from c. 1900, with an admixture of "moderns" (Cassatt, Degas, Macke, Cézanne). Nearly all the artists mentioned would have been familiar to Bernard Berenson and others around the turn of the century: they're mainly 15th through 18th century, principally Italian or Flemish/Dutch. It's sometimes possible to recognize Perec's sources, for example in his description of the way a Giorgione was authenticated based on a cursory early entry in a catalogue, which copies an actual mention of The Tempest.
Some ideas in "A Gallery Portrait"
If Perec's hidden and half-hidden personal references aren't a source of pleasure, and if the art historical themes aren't engaging, what's left is the conceptual frame of the book: its exposition of the mise-en-abyme and its references to artistic freedom and constraint—which can shed light retrospectively on Life A User's Manual. Some examples:
(a) In the end it turns out most of the paintings depicted in "Heinrich Kürz's" painting called A Gallery Portrait are forgeries. The motivation for (supposedly) commissioning the painting is that if the public saw these paintings depicted in a painting they would "quite naturally look like copies, pastiches, and reworkings of genuine paintings," so viewers would assume the actual paintings were genuine. This has an intriguing resonance with Perec's writing, which often appears like a version, pastiche, variation, or reworking of earlier fiction. Since "A Gallery Portrait" is a reworking of Life A User's Manual, by Perec's narrator's logic we assume there's a reality behind it, even the paintings it describes, and the entire book that describes them, are not real. By contrast, and in line with the logic in "A Galery Portrait," Life A User's Manual informs us that it is based on friends, history, and literature—that is, things in the real world.
(b) A Gallery Portrait contains a representation of the painting itself, hanging on the wall of the gallery. Within that painting there is of course a smaller representation of the painting, and so on: a mise-en-abyme. But it's a special sort of mise-en-abyme, because according to the narrative, people noticed small differences between the paintings hung on the wall in A Gallery Portrait, and the paintings hung on the walls in the smaller representation of A Gallery Portrait within A Gallery Portrait. In one passage (p. 169) the narrator says this is a "psychological, rather than aesthetic, procedure," implying that the clinamina* that permit him to deviate from his self-imposed constraints (which in this allegory would be the mise-en-abyme) have a "psychological" value rather than an "aesthetic" one. To me this hints at an overlooked value of the clinamen: it's a way of bringing the author's psychological concerns into the matrix of rules that otherwise bind the project.
* Clinamina: plural of clinamen, in Jonathan Swift's usage. This is cited in the OED as the earliest usage, so it's a good one to follow. For the clinamen in Oulipo, see for example Alison James, Constraining Chance.
(c) At the end of that passage, the narrator suggests that this kind of elaboration can only result in silence, like the silence the painter (supposedly) imposed on himself after he completed A Gallery Portrait. That silence is defined as a consequence of the "fragile borders which constitute the narrow field of all artistic creation." This is also interesting to think about in relation to Bartlebooth's project in Life A User's Manual: he wants an elaborate game to end up with nothing. In "A Gallery Portrait" the enigma is partly explained by the idea that artistic production tends naturally in that direction.
There are other such passages, but these three are enough to suggest that "A Gallery Portrait" is not just a jeu d'esprit sprinkled with private allusions, a play on old-fashioned art history, or a pointlessly playful elaboration on Life A User's Manual, but an elaboration of the earlier book's plays with reality. Yet the two make an extremely odd pair, and not just on account of their unequal size and complexity. Because the paintings in "A Gallery Portait" correspond to the rooms in Life A User's Manual, they associate those rooms, which were already tableaux vivants, with particular canvases—and in doing so they not only augment the earlier book's stories with individual canvases, but also flatten the many details in the earlier book. Reading from the perspective of "A Gallery Portrait," it's as if the contents of Life A User's Manual are reduced to emblems, given a different life and other meanings. If the two books are read in sequence, Life A User's Manual shrinks to a smaller object in the distance, like the receding copy within the copy in A Gallery Portrait.
Despite all these possibilities, Perec's main motivation for pairing the books remains a mystery to me, unless—and I hope I'm not right—it was mainly just an excuse to be playful and spend some time weaving stories from old catalogs of art history.
-
What's of interest here is the relation between two books Georges Perec wrote late in his career. He pointed out that "A Gallery Portrait" (Un cabinet d'amateur) makes reference to all the rooms of Life A User's Manual, implying it is a sort of extended set of notes or comments on the earlier book. Given his interest in mises-en-abyme and intertextual references—every one of the 99 chapters in Life A User's Manual contains a reference to one of his own earlier works—it's interesting to try to understand what he thought he was constructing by writing "A Gallery Portrait" just after Life A User's Manual.
(First a bit of nomenclature, since it gets confusing: A Gallery Portrait is the name of a painting, described in this book of the same name. I'll put the book in quotation marks as if it is an essay: "A Gallery Portrait." A Gallery Portrait is a scene of a man contemplating a painting collection. On the walls in the painting is the painting itself, including the man looking at his paintings. This is not illustrated, but the German edition has a depiction of it painted by Isabelle Vernay-Levèque. That painting is reproduced several times online, but as far as I can see all those are photos of the reproduction on the cover of the German edition. Perec did not intend any illustrations to be part of his book.)
David Bellos describes "A Gallery Portrait" as a kind of jeu d'esprit, full of private allusions, which should be read just for the pleasure of the mystery. He says this both in his biography of Perec and in his introduction to the translation in this book. It's a strangely insufficient response, especially from a person who knows Perec's self-imposed constraints and games, and is aware that nothing in Perec happens simply for the pleasure of an unsolvable enigma. This was Perec's last completed book, and as Bellos says it plays on themes in Life A User's Manual, making the two a sort of mismatched pair—though he doesn't elaborate on what sort of pair they make, or what might be gained by reading the two together.
Art history in "A Gallery Portrait"
The book's own description of its purpose comes at the end, when the narrator says the many art historical descriptions are there for the "pleasure" and "thrill... of deception." Almost all of this book is a recital of art historical problems of identification, provenance, and iconography, and Perec's idea seems to have been to entertain his readers with plausible-sounding accounts of fictional paintings assigned to actual artists.
I find this completely boring. It's old-fashioned art history. I'm biased, since I'm an art historian, but the discussions of authenticity, subject matter, and provenance are the sorts of things that interested art historians from c. 1880 to sometime between the wars, and the roster of artists—I know almost all of them—is a cross-section of European taste from c. 1900, with an admixture of "moderns" (Cassatt, Degas, Macke, Cézanne). Nearly all the artists mentioned would have been familiar to Bernard Berenson and others around the turn of the century: they're mainly 15th through 18th century, principally Italian or Flemish/Dutch. It's sometimes possible to recognize Perec's sources, for example in his description of the way a Giorgione was authenticated based on a cursory early entry in a catalogue, which copies an actual mention of The Tempest.
Some ideas in "A Gallery Portrait"
If Perec's hidden and half-hidden personal references aren't a source of pleasure, and if the art historical themes aren't engaging, what's left is the conceptual frame of the book: its exposition of the mise-en-abyme and its references to artistic freedom and constraint—which can shed light retrospectively on Life A User's Manual. Some examples:
(a) In the end it turns out most of the paintings depicted in "Heinrich Kürz's" painting called A Gallery Portrait are forgeries. The motivation for (supposedly) commissioning the painting is that if the public saw these paintings depicted in a painting they would "quite naturally look like copies, pastiches, and reworkings of genuine paintings," so viewers would assume the actual paintings were genuine. This has an intriguing resonance with Perec's writing, which often appears like a version, pastiche, variation, or reworking of earlier fiction. Since "A Gallery Portrait" is a reworking of Life A User's Manual, by Perec's narrator's logic we assume there's a reality behind it, even the paintings it describes, and the entire book that describes them, are not real. By contrast, and in line with the logic in "A Galery Portrait," Life A User's Manual informs us that it is based on friends, history, and literature—that is, things in the real world.
(b) A Gallery Portrait contains a representation of the painting itself, hanging on the wall of the gallery. Within that painting there is of course a smaller representation of the painting, and so on: a mise-en-abyme. But it's a special sort of mise-en-abyme, because according to the narrative, people noticed small differences between the paintings hung on the wall in A Gallery Portrait, and the paintings hung on the walls in the smaller representation of A Gallery Portrait within A Gallery Portrait. In one passage (p. 169) the narrator says this is a "psychological, rather than aesthetic, procedure," implying that the clinamina* that permit him to deviate from his self-imposed constraints (which in this allegory would be the mise-en-abyme) have a "psychological" value rather than an "aesthetic" one. To me this hints at an overlooked value of the clinamen: it's a way of bringing the author's psychological concerns into the matrix of rules that otherwise bind the project.
* Clinamina: plural of clinamen, in Jonathan Swift's usage. This is cited in the OED as the earliest usage, so it's a good one to follow. For the clinamen in Oulipo, see for example Alison James, Constraining Chance.
(c) At the end of that passage, the narrator suggests that this kind of elaboration can only result in silence, like the silence the painter (supposedly) imposed on himself after he completed A Gallery Portrait. That silence is defined as a consequence of the "fragile borders which constitute the narrow field of all artistic creation." This is also interesting to think about in relation to Bartlebooth's project in Life A User's Manual: he wants an elaborate game to end up with nothing. In "A Gallery Portrait" the enigma is partly explained by the idea that artistic production tends naturally in that direction.
There are other such passages, but these three are enough to suggest that "A Gallery Portrait" is not just a jeu d'esprit sprinkled with private allusions, a play on old-fashioned art history, or a pointlessly playful elaboration on Life A User's Manual, but an elaboration of the earlier book's plays with reality. Yet the two make an extremely odd pair, and not just on account of their unequal size and complexity. Because the paintings in "A Gallery Portait" correspond to the rooms in Life A User's Manual, they associate those rooms, which were already tableaux vivants, with particular canvases—and in doing so they not only augment the earlier book's stories with individual canvases, but also flatten the many details in the earlier book. Reading from the perspective of "A Gallery Portrait," it's as if the contents of Life A User's Manual are reduced to emblems, given a different life and other meanings. If the two books are read in sequence, Life A User's Manual shrinks to a smaller object in the distance, like the receding copy within the copy in A Gallery Portrait.
Despite all these possibilities, Perec's main motivation for pairing the books remains a mystery to me, unless—and I hope I'm not right—it was mainly just an excuse to be playful and spend some time weaving stories from old catalogs of art history.
September 29, 2022
Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard? — 1.5-2 stars.
The Exeter Text — 0.5-1 stars
A Gallery Portrait — 3.5 stars (I feel this text is key to understanding Perec’s work).
Overall: 2 stars.
The Exeter Text — 0.5-1 stars
A Gallery Portrait — 3.5 stars (I feel this text is key to understanding Perec’s work).
Overall: 2 stars.
December 26, 2012
The first novella, Which Moped with Chrome Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard was written before Perec joined the Oulipo, but it is still a work that is in love with wordplay. The story is about a group of recruits who try to help a colleague get out of the draft by drugging him and having him fake madness. It's kind of a dark story, but is as much about wordplay and linguistic exuberance as it is about the story.
The second, The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex, is a companion to Perec's novel without a single letter e, La disparition, which was translated as A Void. This uses no vowels other than e, but is a lot looser with words (the translator, Ian Monk, refers to it as 'the retern of the e', which gives you an idea of the approach. The story is clever, but nigh unreadable. An interesting exercize, but not much more than that.
Finally, the last novella is A Gallery Portrait, which is the last work Perec completed before succumbing to cancer. Like his novel, Life A User's Manual, it's the description of a work of art, though this one is actually completed, and is more about the history of the piece (and the miniature versions of real paintings that show up within the portrait. The best of the bunch.
The second, The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex, is a companion to Perec's novel without a single letter e, La disparition, which was translated as A Void. This uses no vowels other than e, but is a lot looser with words (the translator, Ian Monk, refers to it as 'the retern of the e', which gives you an idea of the approach. The story is clever, but nigh unreadable. An interesting exercize, but not much more than that.
Finally, the last novella is A Gallery Portrait, which is the last work Perec completed before succumbing to cancer. Like his novel, Life A User's Manual, it's the description of a work of art, though this one is actually completed, and is more about the history of the piece (and the miniature versions of real paintings that show up within the portrait. The best of the bunch.
October 2, 2012
Perec-lite, Three consists of three novellas or short stories, including The Exeter Text, which is where all the stray E's absent from La Disparition (A Void) ended up, as it's the only vowel employed. Perec gets around the limitation through ever more creative misspellings, and certain concessions Oulipo granted him. Its remarkable in its way, but still becomes rather tedious after a while.
The Exeter Text is the second story. The volume begins with Which Moped with Chrome Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard, a semi-autobiographical tale of a group of friends who plot to maim or sicken an acquaintance about to be deployed to Algeria, so he can obtain a medical deferment, with less than salutary results. Filled with word play, and eccentric grammar and spelling, this, for me, was the most successful of the three stories.
A Gallery Portrait, on the other hand, apparently based on a jigsaw puzzle depicting Van Haecht's painting, A Visit to the Gallery, is the story of an American beer baron and his art collection, most of which turns out to be fakes.
The Exeter Text is the second story. The volume begins with Which Moped with Chrome Plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard, a semi-autobiographical tale of a group of friends who plot to maim or sicken an acquaintance about to be deployed to Algeria, so he can obtain a medical deferment, with less than salutary results. Filled with word play, and eccentric grammar and spelling, this, for me, was the most successful of the three stories.
A Gallery Portrait, on the other hand, apparently based on a jigsaw puzzle depicting Van Haecht's painting, A Visit to the Gallery, is the story of an American beer baron and his art collection, most of which turns out to be fakes.
July 27, 2024
I started this collection of short stories and a novella without having any background whatsoever and it was…interesting. Perec’s wordplay and writing style is definitely quite an experience to read and translating these stories was definitely no small feat for Monk, especially with “The Exeter Texts”, a novella written entirely in words containing the letter ‘e’, in both the original French and now English version. It’s bizarre yet clever and impressively done, even if the narration and dialogue has to alternate among English, French, and what I can only describe as “ERMAHGERD GERSBERMS” speak to make the constraint work. If I could only just wipe that orgy scene near the end from my memory, my quality of life would be the better for it.
I also thought “Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the back of the Yard?” was similarly strange but very entertaining but I think “A Gallery Portrait” just went over my head. Overall, this is a book I don’t think I regret reading.
I also thought “Which Moped with Chrome-Plated Handlebars at the back of the Yard?” was similarly strange but very entertaining but I think “A Gallery Portrait” just went over my head. Overall, this is a book I don’t think I regret reading.
May 19, 2010
"Perec's artistry has achieved a perfect balance between allure and imponderability."
—Richard Eder, LA Times
"One of the most singular literary personalities in the world."
—Italo Calvino
"Astonishingly rendered into English."
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
"I once had the occasion to write to the translator of these books, David Bellos, and I took the opportunity to let him know that Perec is my favorite writer, and that, since a translator is to a large extent the creative force behind a translated work, he, David Bellos, is also, in a palpable way, my favorite writer. Few writers have opened up the possibilities of literary art with as much enthusiasm, mastery, and pleasure as Perec."
— Martin Riker, Associate Director of the Dalkey Archive Press
—Richard Eder, LA Times
"One of the most singular literary personalities in the world."
—Italo Calvino
"Astonishingly rendered into English."
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
"I once had the occasion to write to the translator of these books, David Bellos, and I took the opportunity to let him know that Perec is my favorite writer, and that, since a translator is to a large extent the creative force behind a translated work, he, David Bellos, is also, in a palpable way, my favorite writer. Few writers have opened up the possibilities of literary art with as much enthusiasm, mastery, and pleasure as Perec."
— Martin Riker, Associate Director of the Dalkey Archive Press
March 13, 2008
When you have an anthology it's inevitable that you'll want to compare, favorably or otherwise, one piece to another to another etc. So there are good things and bad things here but mostly good things. You have to like to have a bit of fun to enjoy Perec in full. You have to practice your wry smile. Perec will give you plenty of opportunity to do so.
And do you mind if I gush about The Harvill Press? God, I love the way their books look. I wish I could find more of them here in The States. They are godawfully beautiful.
And do you mind if I gush about The Harvill Press? God, I love the way their books look. I wish I could find more of them here in The States. They are godawfully beautiful.
January 17, 2008
out of the three short stories (which are also very good), i was drawn primarily to the exeter text because it boasts the author's genius and sense of humour. the only vowel used in this short story is 'e'. i was thoroughly entertained by its clever and witty words, wordplay and creative spelling. entertaining, indeed.
Read
December 29, 2019Had it. Read it. Several times. Laughed. A lot. Stared in awe at the pages. A lot. Lost it. The book, that is, not my mind. Now I have it again, huzzah!!
January 4, 2022
[I bought this book mainly for "Les Revenentes" and have read that first, so am marking this as read, but will add reviews for the other two stories later]
so, Les Revenentes:
written in 1972 in French and using no vowels other than "e" (!)
translated in 1996 by Ian Monk into English, preserving the usage of no vowels other than "e" (!!)
and entitled "The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex" "Renderer E. N. Menk" (geddit!?)
this is quite a mad/extraordinary creation, which has moments of hilariously constructed sentences/creative mis-spellings, but which was hard work early on as it was difficult to follow the relationships between the characters (not to mention what they were up to!) - the latter half was much more fun as it descended into a (remarkably explicit) sex orgy, and there seemed to be an associated jewel-heist going on (I think!). 3.5 stars, but rounding down for now, although when I re-read I intend to take it more slowly/carefully and try to discern more plot detail...
so, Les Revenentes:
written in 1972 in French and using no vowels other than "e" (!)
translated in 1996 by Ian Monk into English, preserving the usage of no vowels other than "e" (!!)
and entitled "The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex" "Renderer E. N. Menk" (geddit!?)
this is quite a mad/extraordinary creation, which has moments of hilariously constructed sentences/creative mis-spellings, but which was hard work early on as it was difficult to follow the relationships between the characters (not to mention what they were up to!) - the latter half was much more fun as it descended into a (remarkably explicit) sex orgy, and there seemed to be an associated jewel-heist going on (I think!). 3.5 stars, but rounding down for now, although when I re-read I intend to take it more slowly/carefully and try to discern more plot detail...
September 16, 2018
***3.5 stars***
Which Moped ...: 3 stars
The Exeter Text: 1 star (unreadable)
A Gallery Portrait: 4.5 stars
Which Moped ...: 3 stars
The Exeter Text: 1 star (unreadable)
A Gallery Portrait: 4.5 stars
October 15, 2024
The Exeter Text, whilst clever, isn't a good read, and I just wanted it to finish.
The other two are better, but I have preferred other Perec works.
The other two are better, but I have preferred other Perec works.
July 16, 2009
Three contains three novellas by French experimentalist Georges Perec, who died in 1982 at age 46. The novellas are: The Exeter Text: Jewels, Secrets, Sex (1972); A Gallery Portrait (1979); and Which Moped with Chrome-plated Handlebars at the Back of the Yard? (1966). These are so-called “ludic” novellas, to distinguish them from more serious works such as Things and (his masterpiece) Life A Users Manual. Perec experimented with writing to rigid rules: for example, writing an entire novel (The Void) without once using the vowel e. The Exeter Text is a sort of counterbalance to The Void: it is written with no other vowel but e. As you might expect, it is essentially unreadable. In A Gallery Portrait, Perec describes in excruciating detail a particular painting, its composition and history, along with many of its gallery-mates: the novella often reads like an art catalog, and is almost as boring. Moped, Perec’s first ludic novella, concerns a young soldier trying to avoid going off to fight with the French army in Algiers; despite this serious theme, the work is full of narrative-play and wordplay and purports to purvey all of the principal figures of speech.*
All in all, I would recommend Perec only to serious writers, over-intellectualizers and French dilettantes (redundant?).
One of the more intelligible passages from The Exeter Text (no vowels but e, remember):
“Eject Mehmet? Wrestle the rebels between these jebels then skewer them? Yet we’d never be serene then, never! These Berbers resemble sleek serpents. The desert dwellers defend them. The deepest secrets enshell them. Whenever we seek them, we’re checked! We’d best wheedle them, then. Detect the pretext where they’ll detest Ben Berek! Teehee! Let the tempests rend them! The Berber’s reverence’s deep, yet when they’ve rejected the berk, he’ll be stewed! The men’ll seek revenge! Yes! Yes! Yet where’ll we seek the pretext? Let me see…Let me see…Yep! Here’s the best bet: we’ll pretend the respected leeder’s deep between French sheets, where he betreys the rebels’ secrets!”
*Chapter 18, “www.romanempire.gov,” of my novel Mister Right, a much more readable literary experiment, incorporates nearly sixty of the tropes described in Quinn’s book Figures of Speech.
All in all, I would recommend Perec only to serious writers, over-intellectualizers and French dilettantes (redundant?).
One of the more intelligible passages from The Exeter Text (no vowels but e, remember):
“Eject Mehmet? Wrestle the rebels between these jebels then skewer them? Yet we’d never be serene then, never! These Berbers resemble sleek serpents. The desert dwellers defend them. The deepest secrets enshell them. Whenever we seek them, we’re checked! We’d best wheedle them, then. Detect the pretext where they’ll detest Ben Berek! Teehee! Let the tempests rend them! The Berber’s reverence’s deep, yet when they’ve rejected the berk, he’ll be stewed! The men’ll seek revenge! Yes! Yes! Yet where’ll we seek the pretext? Let me see…Let me see…Yep! Here’s the best bet: we’ll pretend the respected leeder’s deep between French sheets, where he betreys the rebels’ secrets!”
*Chapter 18, “www.romanempire.gov,” of my novel Mister Right, a much more readable literary experiment, incorporates nearly sixty of the tropes described in Quinn’s book Figures of Speech.
August 11, 2011
the story of a group of men desperately planning to save their friend from conscription to the Algerian war is wonderful - for me demonstrating how Georges Perec can write a rivetting piece of fiction with all of his styistic flair. The other two perambulate and masturbate with words and style = not really bedtime reading even for me (and I love linguistics)
April 22, 2013
Reading Perec is like attending a college classroom. With one major difference: you really have to give yourself in, not because you have an exam but because you really don't want to miss anything.
This is a very clever book and it is not for everybody, some readers may find it unreadable especially when they hit the second story. Nevertheless I enjoyed reading this.
This is a very clever book and it is not for everybody, some readers may find it unreadable especially when they hit the second story. Nevertheless I enjoyed reading this.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews