Lettres autographes

Two letters follow one another, interspersed with a reply from Quilliet that is now lost, and can only have been written in December 1956. A pivotal moment.

“Cher et illustre,

Un gosse veut faire sa seconde. Il vient de sa lointaine Tunisie. Il doit être interne. Est-ce possible à Dreux ? Je te le recommande — c’est le cousin d’un de mes amis. Fais-moi signe à ce sujet. Où peut-on te voir — ou alors écris, le plus tôt possible. Cas urgent.

Beaucoup de nouveautés. À un de ces jours. [signature]. Georges Perec 18 rue de l’Assomption, Paris 16e.”

Perec had discovered his new home on the rue de l’Assomption on his return from the Vercors: David and Esther Bienenfeld — his uncle and aunt — moved there in the summer of 1945 and, having become his legal guardians in May 1945, took him in in Paris that September. He was then nine years old, and had been without father or mother since the age of four.

He spent his entire childhood and adolescence in the apartment, then, from the age of twenty, in the maid’s room on the floor above, which he would leave at the end of 1956. The rue de l’Assomption address given at the foot of the letter allows this previously unpublished letter to be dated to the days preceding his departure — a departure that may not even have been decided yet at that point. The decision would be taken a fortnight later, since in a second letter, dated 19 December, Perec states that he is “looking for a room — independent and preferably ‘intra muros Lutetia Parisiensis.’”

This second letter, important for reasons explained below, is quoted — though not reproduced — in David Bellos’s biography, but dated there to 1955. It in fact dates from a year later, since it refers directly to the search mentioned on 4 December on behalf of Perec’s Tunisian schoolmate:

“Pour mon jeune ami, Problème résolu. Il a trouvé une place à Etampes [the Collège Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, where Perec had boarded from fourth form to second form, before entering the Lycée Claude-Bernard in September 1952, then returning to Étampes for his final year]. Merci pour ton offre donc — encore qu’elle s’avère désormais inutile.”

Perec had offered this help to his classmate from hypokhâgne, Bernard Quilliet. The two had just spent the school year together, but, owing to unsatisfactory results, Perec was asked to leave the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and, in October 1955, enrolled at the Sorbonne — with no more success. The first year was a long drift; the second would be worse still:

“En ce qui concerne la Sorbonne, j’y suis tous les jours trois à quatre minutes, sauf le vendredi où je rentre un quart d’heure. Je me suis aperçu au début du mois de novembre que je m’y étais fourvoyé. J’ai en conséquence envoyé Clio paître [Perec had enrolled for a degree in History, whose muse is Clio] pour me consacrer à Melpomène [muse of song, musical harmony and tragedy], laquelle, entre parenthèse, s’avéra trop coriace pour moi.”

After the modest attempts of his hypokhâgne year (with Bernard Quilliet, with whom he wrote a comic strip), Perec, during this second university year, completed Les Errants, finished in January 1956, while turning his attention to the theater, and particularly tragedy — a genre that would prove, in his own words, “too tough” for him. He confirmed this interest in a letter to Jacques Lederer, telling him he had written a whole tragedy which he found very bad and had put away in the back of a drawer (Bellos, p. 102). This fact is confirmed here, in almost the same terms:

“Ma tragédie inachevée (O, Manes de Shubert [unidentified]) repose donc dans un tiroir, cependant que j’ai, sans perdre haleine, écrit une pièce burlesque (Systématiquement burlesque [unidentified]).”

Above all, he announces the completion of a “collection of 30 short texts”: this is Manderre. This is the earliest known mention of the text, which, on the original typescript, is indeed dated December 1956. Manderre is in fact the earliest surviving work of fiction by Perec, thanks to its discovery in 1989 in Belgrade by David Bellos.

Finally, Perec also announces “an essay sketch (on Burlesque [remains unidentified]) and that he is now setting to work on a novel.” Probably not L’Attentat de Sarajevo, which would not be conceived until six months later. Could this already be Les Choses? Around his twentieth birthday, in March 1956, Georges Perec entered a crisis linked to his writing, his future, and his idleness, which he tried to treat by beginning analysis in June. On 1 November, he decided, for the first time, to visit his father’s grave at Nogent-sur-Seine, which he would later describe in W ou le souvenir d’enfance (Pl. I, 685), before writing two short biographies of his parents, likewise incorporated, in bold type, into W.

His motivation to write, despite the depression, remained intact, and as soon as Manderre was finished, Perec wished to leave the building and his adoptive family: “Evidemment en plus je travaille pour gagner ma vie. Je fais pour l’heure une demi douzaine de métiers. Je te raconterai ça. Je cherche une chambre — indépendante et de préférence ‘intra muros Lutetia Parisiensis.’ Peu importe si elle est vide — au contraire. Si tu en connais fais moi signe. Dis moi les jours où tu viens à Paris. Je te verrai avec plaisir. Je reste là pendant les vacances. Si tu quoque (mi fili) nous pourrons nous voir. Haut les cœurs et Bas les masques, Vale, Georges.”

This important, previously unpublished letter sheds light on several key elements of Perec’s biography: confirmation of his lack of interest in his history courses (he would obtain no certificate during these two university years), his — abortive — attempt to take a greater interest in classical theater and medieval history, and above all confirmation that, by the end of 1956, something decisive had occurred. “It is here, then, toward the end of 1956, that Perec began to explore the material that was to remain an essential component of his writing…” (Bellos).

It contains the only known contemporary mention of the writing of Manderre and announces — with no other evidence except in hindsight — his forthcoming move and his emancipation from the family apartment.