The General Line: Georges Perec's Early Essays on Art and Politics
Feb 2028 · Verso Books
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About this ebook
Perec's poignant essays on European cultural production, translated in English for the first time.
In these writings, Georges Perec constructs a bold new critical discourse—one that remains faithful to leftist imperatives such as history, class consciousness, and revolution—while maintaining his independence from the dominant voices of the Left, whose vision had long dominated the Left’s understanding of literature and politics in postwar France.
Perec's essays traverse a wide cultural terrain, from the radical experimentation of Free Jazz to the speculative landscapes of Science Fiction, and beyond. Together, they reveal a restless intellect and an enduring love for the divergent cultural materials that would go on to shape Perec’s own literary work.Written against a backdrop of political unrest, domestic division, and global uncertainty, The General Line offers a window into a critical mind grappling with the contradictions of its time. Rob Halpern’s incisive introduction situates these early political essays within both the turbulent historical moment and the evolving trajectory of Perec’s extraordinary body of work.
In these writings, Georges Perec constructs a bold new critical discourse—one that remains faithful to leftist imperatives such as history, class consciousness, and revolution—while maintaining his independence from the dominant voices of the Left, whose vision had long dominated the Left’s understanding of literature and politics in postwar France.
Perec's essays traverse a wide cultural terrain, from the radical experimentation of Free Jazz to the speculative landscapes of Science Fiction, and beyond. Together, they reveal a restless intellect and an enduring love for the divergent cultural materials that would go on to shape Perec’s own literary work.Written against a backdrop of political unrest, domestic division, and global uncertainty, The General Line offers a window into a critical mind grappling with the contradictions of its time. Rob Halpern’s incisive introduction situates these early political essays within both the turbulent historical moment and the evolving trajectory of Perec’s extraordinary body of work.
Perec's poignant essays on European cultural production, translated in English for the first time.
In these writings, Georges Perec constructs a bold new critical discourse—one that remains faithful to leftist imperatives such as history, class consciousness, and revolution—while maintaining his...
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About the author
Georges Perec (1936–82) won the Prix Renaudot in 1965 for his first novel Things: A Story of the Sixties, and went on to exercise his unrivalled mastery of language in almost every imaginable kind of writing, from the apparently trivial to the deeply personal. He composed acrostics, anagrams, autobiography, criticism, crosswords, descriptions of dreams, film scripts, heterograms, lipograms, memories, palindromes, plays, poetry, radio plays, recipes, riddles, stories short and long, travel notes, univocalics, and, of course, novels. Life A User's Manual, which draws on many of Perec‘s other works, appeared in 1978 after nine years in the making and was acclaimed a masterpiece to put beside Joyce‘s Ulysses. It won the Prix Médicis and established Perec‘s international reputation.
Rob Halpern is Professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University. He coordinates The Writers’ Bloc, a poetry writing workshop inside Huron Valley Women’s Prison. His books include Music for Porn (Nightboat 2012) and Hieroglyphs of the Inverted World (Kenning Editions 2021)."
Rob Halpern is Professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University. He coordinates The Writers’ Bloc, a poetry writing workshop inside Huron Valley Women’s Prison. His books include Music for Porn (Nightboat 2012) and Hieroglyphs of the Inverted World (Kenning Editions 2021)."
Georges Perec (1936–82) won the Prix Renaudot in 1965 for his first novel Things: A Story of the Sixties, and went on to exercise his unrivalled mastery of language in almost every imaginable kind of writing, from the apparently trivial to the deeply personal. He composed acrostics, anagrams, aut...
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