Les Adventures de Dixion Harry

Perec composed ten New Year’s greetings, “texticules” built on homophonic riddles, in the form of mimeographed pamphlets that he sent to his friends each year. Each was printed in around a hundred copies.

“Les Adventures de Dixion Harry” (1975) is the fourth in the series, following “Petit abécédaire illustré” (New Year 1970), “Lieux communs travaillés” (1972) and “Versions latines” (1973). It was followed by “Petite histoire de la musique” (1977), “Œuvres anthumes” (1978), “Gamine de blouse” (New Year 1979), “Rom Pol” (1980), “Dictionnaire des cinéastes” (1981) and finally “Cocktail Queneau” (1982).

Here Perec explores the possibilities of wordplay with the English language, which prove abundant for these “adventures de Dixion Harry” (where the pun on “Dictionary” is immediately apparent), offering twenty-one homophonic paraphrases of English expressions and proverbs, such as “T’oublies, ô, Renaud, t’oublies.”