My thoughts on "W, or the Memory of Childhood" by Georges Perec

 I found the novel "W, or the Memory of Childhood" by Georges Perec to be an extremely interesting read for me. I found myself getting lost in the memories of his childhood and the descriptions and the way he had forgotten some of it and was sharing what he could remember was really descriptive and something that I found added a lot fo context to the novel. One thing that confused me was that the cities were being represented by Ws or Rs and just single letters in general. This is something that i found myself questioning throughout the novel based on the significance or meaning of the singular letters. I also was confused by what XX or X was being used to represent whether it was to represent the cities in France or streets, etc. 

My question is why do you think just letters were used to represent places or cities throughout the text?

One thing that surprised me in this novel was when Otto Apfelstahl had sought out the narrator to help find the original Gaspard Winckler even though Otto Apfelstahl had known and was clear about the fact that the narrator had just used his name and had no other clues or hints leading back to the case of Gaspard Winckler being missing. This was something that was interesting to me because the level of work he had to do to have the conversation with the narrator and the effort he put in to track him down did not seem to match up with the abilities the narrator was known to have to help Otto Apfelstahl and his team come closer to finding the original Gaspard Winckler. Another thing that was a bit confusing for me was when the narrator had talked about the place referred to as W. W seemed to be an olympic village or city, which I found very interesting, though I found it difficult to adjust to the different storyline n the novel. Overall, this novel was very interesting to me and I think the mixture of the two stories together added a lot of beauty and realism to the text. I was able to see what was going on in the plot and also have a deeper understanding of the childhood and experiences that he had which definitely created a positive impact on the story. This also led me to understand the text a lot more and have a deeper understanding of the narrator and his life. This novel was very unique to other texts that I have read.

Comments

  1. Michael LiudengMarch 9, 2022 at 4:55 PM

    Hi Taia! I definitely noticed the single-letter names as well and I'm not exactly sure why Perec used them to represent names of places. I think there's some underlying conflict between clarity and ambiguity (which is also showcased in his recollection of childhood memories through photos) so it could be to distance "real" geographical regions from fictional ones. It's also possible that the single-letter names try to resemble the symbolic purposes of those places, like how "W" in French is pronounced double-v (which sounds like double vie, or double life).

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  2. Abi FranceschettiMarch 10, 2022 at 2:42 AM

    Hey Taia!
    I found the use of single letters as city names to be a bit strange at times. However, I feel like that is a stylistic preference of the author. Perec is a funky guy, in the sense that he likes to make weird decisions with the details in his novels pertaining to certain vowels and consonants used, which context they're used, etc. In relation to the description of W; I would say that the narrator describes at Olympic-esque, but then turns really bad (kind of like a concentration camp). That is not a random label I am giving it, it is a pretty pertinent theme in the novel, and I know the author had a personal connection to the concentration camps as well, which definitely played a role in why he chose to portray certain things in certain ways.

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  3. Devanshi SanghaviMarch 20, 2022 at 12:30 PM

    Hi Taia! I agree with your insights of the book - I found the naming system to be quite intriguing too! In fact, I kept wondering how he was able to keep track of all of it! To answer your question, I do believe that the letters were used to represent certain places or cities throughout the text and were used to kind of add to the enigma of the narration. It keeps readers on the edge of their seat as we take the journey with the narrators to make sense of their memories.

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