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    Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere
    Unavailable
    Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere
    Unavailable
    Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere
    Ebook160 pages2 hours

    Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere

    By Georges Perec

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Puckish and playful, Georges Perec infused avant-garde and experimental fiction with a wit and wonder that belied the serious concerns and concepts that underpinned it. A prominent member of the OuLiPo, and an abiding influence on fiction writers today, Perec used formal constraints to dazzling effect in such works as A Void—a murder mystery that contains nary an “e”—and Life A User’s Manual, in which an apartment building, systematically canvassed, unfolds secrets and, ultimately offers a reflection on creation, destruction, and the devotion to art.
     
    Before embarking on these experiments, however, Perec tried his hand at a relatively straightforward novel, Portrait of a Man. His first book, it was rejected by publishers when he submitted it in 1960, after which he filed it away. Decades after Perec’s death, David Bellos discovered the manuscript, and through his translation we have a chance to enjoy it in English for the first time. What fans will find here is a thriller that combines themes that would remain prominent in Perec’s later work, such as art forgery, authenticity, and murder, as well as craftsman Gaspard Winckler, who whose namesakes play major roles in Life A User’s Manual and W or The Memory of Childhood.
     
    Engaging and entertaining on its own merits, and gaining additional interest when set in the context of Perec’s career, Portrait of a Man is sure to charm the many fans of this postmodern master.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateApr 10, 2015
    ISBN9780226054391
    Unavailable
    Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere
    Author

    Georges Perec

    Georges Perec, born in Paris in 1936, was a pioneering French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. Orphaned from an early age, many of his works deal with absence, loss and identity, often through word play. He later became an eminent member of the experimental Oulipo group. He died in 1982.

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    Reviews for Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere

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    • 4/5
      It's Georges Perec - author of my very favourite book of all time - so it has to be good, doesn't it? And indeed it is.

      I'd read about this novel - Perec's second, but never published in his lifetime - in David Bellos' monumental biography of Perec, so when it finally turned up in print I had to have it. It's taken me a couple of years to get around to reading it. A curious work in two parts (the second is a retelling of the first), it features Gaspard Winckler, also the name of one of the main characters in "Life a User's Manual", though it's not clear if they're one and the same. It concerns a frustrated forger who murders his paymaster. Reputed to be difficult because it's told in the first,second and third persons, I didn't find it so at all. I'm not at risk of giving any plot spoilers because there isn't much of a plot, to be honest. But that doesn't matter. It's an entertaining meditation on creativity and genius, written with Perec's characteristic wit.

      By coincidence, I had just read Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters", also a contemplation of a single portrait and artistic genius in which nothing much happens, and the two worked well as a piece.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating unpublished early novella by the writer more famous for Life: A User's Manual. It tells the story of Gaspard Winckler, an art forger and his obsession with a failed attempt to create an original painting to match the renaissance master Antonello's Condottiere, better known in English as Portrait of a Man. Winckler tells his story first as a stream of consciousness narration and then by answering questions, as a form of cathartic confession after murdering his patron. It is difficult not to read this at least partially as a metaphor for the novelist's own struggle to create his first work, but also a meditation on the nature of creativity and originality in the arts. Like all of Perec's work the language is playful and entertaining, which creates obvious challenges for the translator.The translation is by David Bellos, who was not only the translator of the best known English versions of much of Perec's other work, but also the writer of a brilliant book on the art of translation, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything. Bellos had a hand in unearthing the manuscript of this book while researching a biography of Perec, and has added an introduction to this version.