Georges Perec
1936-1982
Georges Perec was born in Paris (March 7, 1936), and died in Ivry (March 3, 1982). He lived in Paris nearly all his life. His father fought in World War II and was killed in 1940. While the Germans gradually took France over, Perec was taken to the country by relatives. His mother disappeared in Paris, near the end of 1942. Later, she died in Auschwitz. Perec, an orphan at six, was raised by his uncle and aunt. Perec was a member of OuLiPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or "Workshop of Potential Literature"), a Paris-based group of writers founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François LeLionnais. Other well-known members were the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American Harry Matthews. OuLiPo tries to expand literature by borrowing formal patterns from such other domains as mathematics, Logic or chess. Perec's own books range from novels to collections of crossword puzzles, from essays to parodies, from poetry to wordgames. Perec was fascinated by palindromes, which are words or entire sentences that, when spelled backwards, still read the same: Live Devil or See, slave, I demonstrate yet arts no medieval sees. Perec created what is possibly the longest palindrome e…
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