Georges Perec - La Boutique Obscure - 124 Dreams

Wide shot: a roll of blue and yellow bills, differing only by the digit: $500, $500, $100, etc., a long stretch of $1 bills in the middle, then back to large denominations.

In the meantime, I learn that I’m going to be a father, then that I am: the child was born, I wasn’t even told.

I walk down a long hallway, trying to think of a suitable name: it needs to be very short (like Jorg’) or very long. Didier, for instance, would not work.

It’s a girl. Her name is something like Didière or Denise. She has very skinny legs with socks and little white shoes. She seems rather unhappy to see me.

While kissing her, I happen to tear off a tiny piece of her tongue in development (flesh not yet fully firm). I worry that this will harm her growth.

It’s not my wife who is looking after the girl but rather a friend of hers.

C .

Weekend in Dampierre. C. and one of his friends arrive. I talk to him about a project for a television adaptation of The Raise . Someone else proposed a similar project to me recently.

C. tells me he’s the one behind the project, that he had talked about it to (neither one of us manages to remember the name).

(I don’t remember anything else when I wake up, but all of this seems so logical that I remain convinced that the scene is plausible, even real).

S/Z

I go back to that bookstore where the books, most of them used, are stacked, or rather heaped, in a corner.

I’m looking for a particular book, but the bookseller says she doesn’t have it. Z. and I browse a few other titles.

I find a book; I recognize the name of the author, but nothing more; it’s a huge collection, or dictionary, of S/Z variations in the works of Balzac.

Each page has four columns:

The “attested term” and “use reference” columns give explanations, the “S” and “Z” columns indicate all the transformed words. Thus:

(Maissé is the name of a character, and Maizsé, which at first I do not understand, is — of course! how could I forget? — the name of a village in Poland.)

This goes on for pages and pages. Each term, or rather each pair, is so evident that it seems odd that it didn’t occur to anybody earlier, shocking that we had to wait for Roland Barthes to notice it.

Leafing backward through the book, Z. shows me a series of epigraphs (in red?) at the beginning of a chapter. The first says something like “Perec gives up his letters”; it’s an excerpt from an article about A Void , but I can’t find the name of the author or the name of the newspaper; I am quite pleased with it, as if this quotation were a sign of recognition (of being taken seriously).

The author of the book is a woman and I remember having read one of her novels.

Initials

Two of my old friends (let’s say one is Pierre B., whom I have not seen in ten years are in Dampierre. A third — he has the same name as a manager whom I hear about sometimes but have never seen — may have been arrested. Someone asks if he is G.P. No, I exclaim. Maoist or P.C., then. I take that to mean P.C.F. and remark: that’s not the same thing, though! But the other one specifies: P.C.M.L.F.

Most of the terms in this dream are like crossword clues.

To the South

When I wake up, only one word remains:

Marseilles

We were heading South.

We had already been there, but we were coming from another town.

Cats

After various perambulations, I am back in the building on rue de Quatrefages (or is it rue des Boulangers? or rue de Seine?).

I’m going from the back room to the front. Denis B. is there (or is it Michaud?).

On the ground, cats. At least three. Tiny little balls of fur. I shout: I said loud and clear that I won’t have that a cat here! I take one of the cats, walk to the door, and toss it out. Then I notice that between the floor and the door there’s a space large enough for a small cat to enter.

Anyway, the whole house is an utter mess.

The downstairs neighbor has a gigantic chimney in his house. He makes a fire and my room burns. Beneath the ashes of the floorboards you can see pieces of masonry and bits of iron from the frame. My friend asks with dismay what we’re going to do. But I’m not in the least bit disturbed and I calmly go down the list of things that need to be done.

Two plays

I am to be in two plays.

A recent walk-on part revealed my acting talent and I was cast on the spot.

At the moment I’m supposed to enter, I realize that I haven’t rehearsed, nor even read my part once.

The scene takes place in a large hall-cafeteria-dormitory-canteen. The actors are seated at a table. I take the remaining empty seat, right at the front of the stage.

I’m playing a tramp. On the table is a piece of paper with some lines on it, but an actor next to me (who is also the director) leans over and whispers that it’s not my part.

I am stricken with unease. A bit later, though, someone manages to pass me a sheet (of something like butcher paper) with a few notes from the script. I have to make do with winks from my partners to know when it’s my turn to speak.

The play begins.

I am lost. I’m sure I’m saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment. Happily, the author has written a very disjointed play, a hullabaloo.

After quite a while of considerable discomfort (I’m ruining everyone else’s work), riot police arrive in the back of the auditorium.

It’s part of the play.

Great confusion.

On to the second play.

It’s an act with three characters. I am playing the bear (or maybe the devil?) and across from me are either Faust and Marguerite or Don Juan and Faustine. Someone brings me fur for my costume. I’m not worrying much about my lines; my part consists chiefly of grunts.

I learn that the role was in fact written for Roger Blin, who’s supposed to take over for me after this performance, and I find it hilarious to “create a role for Blin to reprise.”

The first play, was it actually a rehearsal? In any case, the second is not performed.

The S-shaped bar

I am with Pierre G. in my room. My bed is covered in plastic foam cubes wrapped in transparent plastic casings. Good thing, because water is dripping from the walls and ceiling. For that matter, it’s as though the walls and ceiling are just a single network of multicolored tubes. Everything is soaked. Pierre explains that the people upstairs are having their bathtub redone (refitted).

There is a table next to the bed and on the table a telephone off its hook. I sense that if I hang it up, it will begin to ring (actually, maybe it’s even ringing now, even though it’s off the hook). I hang up; nothing happens.

Later, Pierre and I are in a large drugstore. At one point I find myself alone in the book aisle. All the books are shelved flat and covered in pale-colored jackets (mauve, blue, light grey, rose, lavender, etc.). I realize that they’re all erotic books. The titles are mostly quite short, usually just a female first name (Fabienne, Irene). I don’t recognize the authors’ names (pseudonyms, no doubt).