Me acuerdo

by Georges Perec

Me Acuerdo, libro de culto tantas veces citado y nunca antes traducido al castellano, es la genial e inclasificable obra maestra de Georges Perec, uno de los nombres propios de la literatura contemporánea. Compuesto por 480 anotaciones breves que comienzan todas al grito, o susurro, de "Me Acuerdo" (Je me souviens), sus páginas trazan un extraordinario recorrido por la memoria particular y colectiva más reciente, y lo que comienza siendo un mero ejercicio acaba convertido en una experiencia vital, traviesa, rebelde, que atrapa al lector y lo transporta al límite de lo que significa la verdadera literatura. Según Perec, Me Acuerdo "no son exactamente recuerdos, y desde luego, de ninguna manera, recuerdos personales, sino pequeños fragmentos de diario, de cosas que tal o cual año, todo el mundo de una misma edad vio, vivió, compartió y, después, olvidó [...]. Sucede que, sin embargo, vuelven de nuevo, unos años más tarde, intactas y minúsculas, por casualidad o porque las hemos buscado, una noche, entre amigos".

Genres: France, French Literature, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, 20th Century

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Georges 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.

Reviews

[TBV (on hiatus)]

I remember reading I Remember; I remember that Perec’s random memories were of life in Paris. In I Remember I remember how he played with words, and I remember the amusing anecdotes in I Remember. I remember I Remember, and I remember some of those things too.

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

We all here are very familiar with the feeling of how all books connect with each other. Our reading, and our memories of reading them, links them, and so does chance. Although I had planned to read a Perec soon, I originally wanted to read first his La Disparition, but my very satisfactory reading of Non esiste saggezza put me on the tracks of this one. In Carofiglio’s collection there is a story of a woman who makes lists instead of writing a diary or memoirs. And she mentions Perec’s, and so I followed her trail.

Then, as I was just finishing it, which must be read in several short sittings, I encountered this article in The Economist, which is really a review of this book – The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time which deals with the meeting on April 6th, 1922, between Bergson and Einstein. The meeting did not go well: the views of both men were widely disparate, and the distance that separated them could not be compressed during their time together.

Many of us here in GR are familiar with how much literature was prompted by Bergson’s notion of “durée”, and even if that 1922 debate seemed to put Einstein on top of the time/memory debate, just five years later Bergson was awarded the Nobel Prize – of Literature.

In this book Perec is not following Bergson either. His Je me souviens, are a list of isolated items, ordered with no order in particular, of a great varied nature, and at times humorous at times bleaker. He noted them down along a period (not continuously, mind you) between January 1973 and June 1977 and his objective was precisely to rescue out of oblivion the unimportant. Yet, they are memories that have stuck in the messy mess of our neurons – such as the colours of the various Monopoly streets; that Voltaire’s name is an anagram; the scoubidous; that Stendhal like spinach; that Eichmann was locked in a glass cage during his trial; that his first book in a Book-Club he joined was by Cendrars… Many irr

Like this, or not like this, up to 480 coined souvenirs.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je me souviens, in which Georges Perec lists 479 things he remembers, mostly from between 1946 and 1961, each beginning with "I remember"... The idea was first mentioned to him by this book's dedicatee, Harry Mathews, who told Perec about a book of the same name by American artist, Joe Brainard. His biographer and principal translator, David Bellos, informs us in the introduction that we'll spot references to items in Perec's other works. He also warns us that many of the memories are obscure and might be shared only by Parisians of a certain generation or an even smaller coterie (reading his biography helps somewhat). Here are some of my favourites:

No. 76 - "I remember the motor-paced racing cyclists at Parc des Princes." Well, that's the tale of Albert Massy in Ch. 73 of Life a User's Manual...

No. 96 - "I remember 'quatre quarts' owes its name to the fact it's made from a quarter milk, a quarter sugar, a quarter flour, and a quarter butter." I certainly remember that the Breton cake is a guilty pleasure but I didn't know the origins of its name. Bellos points out that Perec is mistaken - it's a quarter eggs not milk (clearly, the writer had never baked a cake).

No. 181 - "I remember that Johnny Halliday made an appearance as a special guest star at Bobino supporting Raymond Devos (I think I even said something along the lines of: 'if this guy makes it I'm going to top myself...). Ha ha - the "French Elvis". I can only concur with his judgement.

No. 353 - "I remember that the three magi were called Gaspard, Melchior and Balthazar." It would seem that the three wise men were an early obsession. Gaspard Winckler is a recurring name - and perhaps, character - in Perec's fiction, appearing in Portrait of a Man, W, or the Memory of Childhood and, of course, Life a User's Manual.

No. 435 - "I remember when I used to go and fetch milk in a battered tin can." I'm suspecting this must be a memory from before 1946, when Perec lived in the French Alps with his aunt and uncle to avoid the German persecution of the Jews. I have a similar early memory of a holiday in the Swiss Alps. I would be sent every day to the village dairy with my tin jug to ask for "zwei litre milch, bitte".

Superficially, I Remember appears to be a very slight work. Cumulatively, it gathers strength. In tandem with Perec's other works, we build up a portrait of a man from a very particular time and culture. Like so many Frenchmen, he took an interest in cycle racing. He enjoyed the theatre and cinema. He was a bookish child. He enjoyed word games and jokes. He had a sweet tooth (as warranted by the appalling state of his teeth in later life). As a war orphan, he mentions his uncle and cousins but never his parents (similar to the missing 'e' in La disparation). And so what begins as a list, that dry and impersonal medium beloved by the author, ultimately becomes a moving and intimate portrait at one remove.

The actual text of Perec's work spans only 75 pages. Like Eliot's notes on The Wasteland, it might appear to have been bulked out to produce a saleable item. In fact, Bellos's introduction and notes on the items are illuminating. Commenting on No. 231, he notes drily, "A television programme. Perec never owned a set." I didn't know that but it makes sense of course. You don't compose an oeuvre like Perec's sitting on the sofa binge-watching American sitcoms. The translation itself is by the Oulipian expert and author of Oulipoems among other works, Philip Terry. And an excellent translation it is too.

Having read Bellos's biography, I was aware of this work long before it became available in English. Now my curiosity is sated.

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

1982’de akciğer kanserinden genç yaşta ölen, benim edebiyatta ilk beşimde yeralan Georges Perec daha gençken 1973-78 tarihleri arasında hatırladığı bazı olayları, kişileri, “çıfıt” diyebileceğimiz sıradan şeyleri hatırlamış ve kaydetmiş. Bunların bir kısmını ben de hatırlıyorum. Ancak yazılanlar Fransız ağırlıklı olduğundan çoğuna yabancı kaldım, gerçi hatıralar için kitap arkasında yararlı olan açıklayıcı notlar eklenmiş. Keşke bizler de benzer “hatırlıyorum” notları ile bellek tazelesek. Perecseverlere.

[Bjorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember

and let me just stop myself right there. It's much too easy to write gag reviews of Perec, to adopt the trick of any particular book and write the review the same way; review A Void without using the letter E, etc. It's precious and clever and just don't. Because Perec is so much more than just a clown and he deserves more respect than that.

I Remember, then, is a series of memories, written exactly like that:

I remember Xavier Cugat.

I remember the 121.

I remember only two or three of the seven dwarves; Grumpy, Dopey, Doc.

...and so on and so on, 479 of them, summing up Perec's life from age 10 to roughly age 25 (though some memories, like the Baader Meinhof gang or Sharon Tate, were obviously more recent when he wrote them down in the mid-70s). Each memory is presented as just a flash, a simple, clear statement, huge events like the liberation of France or insignificant details like the name of a kind of candy get equal treatment. Some are completely mysterious 60 years later, at least without googling them. Some are memories of things he doesn't remember. Some are objectively wrong. Some... or rather many, to the surprise of no one who's read Perec, are puns of varying degrees of obscenity, or mnemonic devices. Some are unanswered questions.

As often with Perec, the simple act of putting all of these together is part of what makes it any more than just a collection of nonsense sentences. Those two words at the beginning of each sentence, "I remember", tells us: there's a story behind all of these. They all shape a person. They all clutter everyone's subconscious. 479 hooks baited with nothing more than our curiousity to want to know more, and having to substitute our own memories for his unspoken ones.

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is bizarre but more importantly warm exercise: a series of memories all predicated by, I remember. What emerges are largely historical events and aspects of popular culture. What emerges on the edges is something a bit more raw. I believe this text can be read with an eye towards Perec’s other work W. The exercise demonstrates what we can but also what we choose to remember.

[Sweet Jane]

Τα 480 "θυμάμαι" του Perec είναι κατακερματισμένη όλη του η ζωή. Γιατί τι άλλο είμαστε εκτός από μνήμες;

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impossible book to put down. In fact, I'm going to read it again. Kind of based on Joe Brainard's famous and great "I Remember' but different in that Perec didn't read that book, but he heard about it from his friend the writer Harry Mathews. While Brainard's book is more personal and deals with his own observations, Perec's take on "I Remember" is more of the collective memory of the French from a certain time, mostly from the post-war years. So what he remembers here are a lot of French figures from the cinema, music and pop cultural world of Paris 1950s to the 60s - and I think beyond. My favorite, of course, is "I remember that Boris Vian died while coming out of a showing of a film adapted from his book 'I Spit on Your Graves'" A lot of jazz references as well. Excellent book.

[belisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

teknik olarak bir anlatı içermiyor, yine bir liste, bu zorla kitap haline getirilmiş ıvır zıvır nedeniyle Perec'i neden sevdiğimi unutmaktan korkuyorum...

[Álvaro Arbonés]

Me acuerdo de la absoluta irrelevancia de los «momentos compartidos por una generación». Porque las generaciones, con las personas, se mueren.

Me acuerdo de que la ausencia de estructura hace tediosa e inútil la lectura.

Me acuerdo de que la experimentación no tiene sentido sin resultados, porque al público no le interesa el experimento: le interesa el uso de lo experimentado.

Me acuerdo de que Georges Perec es un escritor interesante.

Me acuerdo de que recordar puede ser absolutamente irrelevante para cualquiera que no sea el que recuerda.

Me acuerdo de que el recuerdo gana en interés cuando tiene contexto, peso, razón.

Me acuerdo de que Perec parece no recordar mi recuerdo anterior.

Me acuerdo de aburrirme leyendo Me acuerdo .

Me acuerdo, también, de decir «oh, esa idea sí la encuentro interesante».

Me acuerdo de que eso ocurrió dos, tres veces. Eso es lo que me dan los buenos libros. Por capítulo.

Me acuerdo de lo absolutamente innecesario de esto.

Me acuerdo de porqué puede gustar: porque la gente no lo lee para leer a Perec, sino para tener una excusa para recordar.

Me acuerdo de lo triste que es necesitar una excusa para recordar.

Me acuerdo.

[Lucas Sierra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Admirar una máquina (Comentario, 2022)

Luego de haber leído la original, de Joe Brainard, y la versión de Margo Glantz, esta versión de Perec me pareció insulsa. Creo que eso estaba entre los planes del autor. Digamos que el Me acuerdo de Perec está atravesado por su idea de lo infraordinario, y que eso supone una sumatoria de efectos que en mí no alcanzó a calar con hondura suficiente. Los ajustes que Perec hace a la máquina de Brainard fluyen bien, pero cambian la máquina. En este sentido, creo que es un esfuerzo por mejorar una cuchara.

La cuchara funciona perfectamente bien sin mejora alguna.

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some fun (Perec is always fun) but I don’t think this book - some 480 anaphoric isometric-ish “I remember” sentences, making memorial reference to everything from the relatively evergreen (childhood toys; changing fashions) to the extremely particular (French athletes, actors, and advertisements of the 1950s) - translates well for the monoglot 21st-C. American in me.

[Lore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ideaal om er tussendoor even bij te nemen, wanneer je eigenlijk geen tijd hebt om te lezen.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a light read, an amusing list of what Georges Perec remembered -- all utterances begin with the words "I remember" - and wrote down, obeying a constraint: the items had to be products, people, events, etc. that other people would remember also. There is a good introduction and there are good notes at the back. Philip Terry and David Bellos handled those, and the translation. Perec also put in an index. Sometimes the items come from other works by him, or are used in them. Well worth picking up.

Here's a longer appraisal:

http://www.raintaxi.com/i-remember/

[Ángela · Rating 5 out of 5]

He encontrado uno de los libros de mi vida y me ha llegado tarde, como todo. El ejercicio maravilloso de Perec al recoger esos recuerdos triviales, cotidianos, nos habla de cómo en esas nimiedades y memorias fugaces es que nos jugamos la vida. Pero no solo la vida personal, sino la historia de un país, la visión completa de una cultura, una forme de ver el destino, la muerte, la vida y el amor que es colectiva, pero se construye en cada mirada.

[J B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was shocked to find this and Tao Lin's Bed in my Goodwill.

[Laura ✯ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Me parece cómico que se acuerda de cosas pero a medias o se le olvidan. Texto para un taller de lecto-escritura.

[Vilo Torralvo]

Cortito, rápido de leer y adictivo.

Aunque pueda parecer banal es como prácticamente leer la vida de una persona.

[Facundo Melillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bien, es Perec y siempre es interesante (salvo ciertos libros muy puntuales). Este es un ejercicio sobre la memoria y su relación con la escritura blablabla. Un poco embolante en sí, pero la idea detrás le da bastante interés al libro. No sé si vale tanto la pena pero, repito, es Perec así que sí

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting departure from the usual set of memories. Perec does it again.

[Gökçe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kendime not:


Şeyler kitabı ikinci okuyuşum

[Ilaria Quercia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immaginate di aprire un cassetto rimasto chiuso per decenni e di trovarci dentro frammenti di vita apparentemente insignificanti: il jingle di una vecchia pubblicità, il colore di una gomma da masticare, il modo in cui si apriva una porta in una casa che non esiste più. Georges Perec, con il suo Je me souviens, ha fatto esattamente questo: ha preso il banale e lo ha elevato a letteratura.
Pubblicato negli anni ’70, questo non è un romanzo con una trama definita, ma un paesaggio di memorie sospese tra l'ironia e la nostalgia, un'antologia di "minimi termini" che, messi l'uno accanto all'altro, compongono il mosaico di un'intera epoca, un catalogo intero di ricordi svelati attraverso un dettaglio con un metodo che abbraccia un'intera esistenza.
La vera magia del progetto di Perec è che non appartiene solo al passato, ma che diventa un vortice che mescola con un frammento, un profumo o un'immagine passato e presente. La formula "Mi ricordo..." agisce come una miccia nella testa di chi legge. Non serve essere scrittori per usarla; basta essere stati vivi, essersi emozionati. La nostra identità non è fatta solo di grandi date storiche, ma di memorie collettive condivise poeticamente nelle piccole cose: canzoni, marchi e mode che diventano il patrimonio comune di chiunque abbia abitato lo stesso tempo, il "mi ricordo" condiviso da milioni di persone contemporaneamente ovunque. Ed è impossibile non ricordare leggendo, non creare il tuo archivio personale che, unendosi a quello degli altri, diventa un grande diario globale, così mi ricordo anche io, Ilaria.
Mi ricordo... il profumo di mandarino a Natale, mi ricordo l'odore delle matite di legno il primo giorno di scuola, mi ricordo la nebbia la mattina presto sulla Torre del Mangia, mi ricordo il silenzio del lockdown, ma mi ricordo anche di Cannavaro con la Coppa del mondo fra le mani e mi emoziono ancora un po'.

[Leyles Leon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Georges Perec, en su obsesión por lo infraordinario, nos presenta en "Me acuerdo" un inventario de 480 fragmentos de su infancia. La idea es ambiciosa y tomada de Joe Brainard: recoger esos momentos cotidianos para construir un mosaico de una vida, de una época, de una cultura.

El autor nos invita a sumergirnos en su mundo, a través de recuerdos de infancia, de objetos, de lugares. La acumulación de anécdotas logra generar alguna emoción. La idea de que en lo trivial se esconde la esencia de la vida cobra aquí relevancia. En este ejercicio sobre la memoria y la escritura, se explora los límites de la autobiografía, la relación entre el individuo y la sociedad, y la construcción de la identidad a través del recuerdo y las vivencias.

Si conociera mejor la cultura francesa, quizás podría apreciar mejor las sutilezas de esos recuerdos. Pero, como lector ajeno a ese contexto, me sentí como un espectador lejano, observando espacios llenos de erudición que no logré comprender del todo.

14
Me acuerdo del pan amariloo que hubo durante un tiempo después de la guerra.

148
Me acuerdo de que Fidel Castro era abogado.

359
Me acuerdo de que mi tío tenía un aparato con el que afilaba sus cuchillas de afeitar.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Med min begrensede kunnskap om fransk kultur etter andre verdenskrig er det sikkert begrenset hva jeg fikk ut av teksten i seg selv, men jeg likte veldig godt kunstformen. Oversettelsen er bra, med forklarende noter, men det er litt stress at det ikke er markert hvilke minner som har en note, så det gjelder å hoppe litt frem og tilbake. Det har ikke så mye å si, for dette er jo en kolleksjon med tilfeldige erindringer, og de kommer ikke i rekkefølge sånn egentlig.

Jeg likte også at den originale franske teksten var bevart ved siden av oversettelsen. For den som kan fransk er det sikkert også spennende at det går an å gjøre sin egen oversettelse. Dette viser en ydmykhet ovenfor teksten som flere oversettere burde ha. (selv om bøker fort ville blitt veldig tjukke.)

Je me souviens er ikke egentlig en bok, men en svært intim kunstopplevelse.

[Cristina Moreno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quería leer este libro desde hacía mucho tiempo.
Debería hacer como Perec, dejar por escrito algunos de mis recuerdos, quizas intrascendentes para el resto e incluso imprecisos, porque es una manera de reconstruirse.
Si conociera mejor la cultura francesa, habría podido conectar mejor los recuerdos del autor conmigo y con mis recuerdos. Desgraciadamente he perdido muchas cosas, pero otras, completamente olvidadas han reaparecido. Por ejemplo: Me acuerdo del frió en las mejillas cuando entrenaba los 1500 metros.

[Abby True · Rating 5 out of 5]

Georges Perec is the only French writer I have allowed myself to read in English and I’m not sure that was the right call. And yet he is so great and so delightful. And I feel delighted and great to read him.

[Rubén · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy bonito ejercicio de memoria y recuerdos de Perec. Recuerdos corrientes, memoria banal, imperfecta, compartida, eslóganes de comerciales, la vida en Francia y la guerra. Dan ganas de recordar.

[Akseli Koskela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je me souviens… je l’aime.

[Enrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como dicen otros comentarios: Me acuerdo de haberlo disfrutado y haber aprendido un montón de historias pequeñas de un Pari que ya no es...

[Emilia]

Me parece que este es un libro del cual no puedo opinar tan claramente. Me pareció muy genial por asi decirlo todas las cosas que este hombre recordaba pero por otro lado estas cosas no tenían nigún valor para mi y solo algunas cosas mencionadas pude entenderlas. Todo lo demás me parece muy adoc al momento que se estaba viviendo.