Description
Book SynopsisExamines the representation and staging of chance in literature through the work of the French writer Georges Perec. This book explores the ways in which Perec's texts exploit the possibilities of chance, by both tapping into its creative potential and controlling its operation.
Trade ReviewWarren F. Motte calls it an erudite, engaging, intellectually intrepid reflection on the ways in which one of the most powerful authors of the twentieth century grappled with the notion of chance. [James] writes with both elegance and authority, inviting us to see Georges Perec's work through a new lens, one where chance may be viewed as a positive potential, fully enlisted in the service of 'intentional' literature.
Table of ContentsIntroduction; The Notion of Chance; Chance and Literature; Perec and the Oulipo; Mastering History; History, Politics, and La Ligne generale; Commitment or Chance; Conquering the World; Les Choses: Tensions and Tenses; Escaping History: Un homme qui dort; Chance and Circumstance; Questioning Destiny; Power and Passivity; Chance and the Law; Life as Lottery: Perec and Borges; Possibilities; Games of Anti-Chance; Fortune and Fate; Cause and Effect; Incidents and Accidents; Reversals and Recognitions; Chance and Calamity; Stories Without Event; Retrospection and Rupture; Digression and Damnation; Traps and Machinations; Hidden Signals; Means and Ends; Schemes and Disguises; Chance and Detection; Clue and Coincidence; Red Herrings; Text and World; A Challenge to Chance: The Poetics of the Oulipo; Chance and the Oulipo's Critics; Voluntary Literature: Oulipian Anti-Surrealism; Aleatory Art; Controlling Chance; Chance and Language; Mysticism, Mathematics, Meaning; Method and Mechanism: S+7; Perec's Constraints: Combination, Coincidence, Clinamen; La Disparition: Codes and Cliches; Alphabets: Chaotic Language; La Vie mode d' emploi: Combination and Clinamen; From List to Text; Coherence and Multiplicity; Form Versus Diagram; Constraint and Chaos; Labyrinths and Puzzles; Literary Labyrinths; The Rat in the Maze; Ceiling and City; Verbal Ruses and Oulipian Rats; Complications; The Art of the Jigsaw; Artists and Quests; Chance and System; Ordering the Infra-Ordinary; Chance and the Real; Les Choses: Objects as Signs; Common Things: Perec and the Infra-Ordinary; Chance, Perception, Habit: Tentative d' epuisement d' une lieu parisien; The Event and the Everyday; Perec's Lists; Classifications; The World as Jigsaw; Order and Constraint; Conclusion; Bibliography.
