A Man Asleep

A Man Asleep is, in many ways like Things.  I can see why the two of Georges Perec’s novellas have been combined into the one volume.  The two tales were written in succession and they cover off a lot of the same ideas, themes and general existential angst.   The real problem, though, is that A Man Asleep is just not as good as Perec’s first work.

I hate second person narratives.  I couldn’t stand studying Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller… and I didn’t much enjoy reading A Man Asleep because of it.  It’s an alienating way of writing.  While it is possible to empathise and identify with male characters when they are written in the first or the third person, using “you” makes this so much more difficult. It may be because it’s so rare, but I find it difficult to not relate “you” to myself when I read it.  Because Perec’s “you” is a man it becomes jarring over the little things that men are more likely to do then women (such as sitting in bed just wearing just pyjama bottoms).  This can detract from the narrative.  The limitations of the English language also affect the second person narrative.  In French there is a difference in meaning between the two “you” forms- “tu” and “vous”- which can’t be replicated in modern English. 

There are parts of A Man Asleep that I did enjoy.  At times- when encouraging the recall of memories for example- the tone feels like that of a hypnotist.  I think this is more of a testament to the translator, Andrew Leak, rather than any particular skill of Perec himself.  Other than that there’s not so much going on.   Very little happens and no-one’s happy about it.  Like the ending of Things, it has a sense of inevitability about it but, and this sounds slightly childish, it’s just not as good as Things.  That is, essentially, the crux of why I didn’t enjoy this book as much.

I think there’s still another Perec book on The List for me to read and I am cautiously optimistic.  Perec’s one of those authors that I really have to be in the mood for, and my mood can change mid-book.  There were parts of both Life: A User’s Manual and A Void that I loved a parts that I hated.  Perec is a good author, but there are only so many ruminations on nothing a woman can take.  Even though I split reading Things and A Man Asleep up by reading Flowers for Algernon in between (bafflingly this isn’t a List Book and it really should be).  I think I just read them too close together and that I’d have had far more patience with A Man Asleep if I’d given the two books more distance.

I’m now about to start (in contrast to all this Franco-philia) England Made Me, by Graham Green.