Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I was disappointed with this book despite having high hopes for it. In homage to his father's passing, Perec took on the nearly impossible task of writing a book without the letter 'e' which in French is quite a challenge. The missing 'e' of course represents his father, but the story seems forced because of this constraint. I found that the narrative was not really that interesting and he ended up recycling some of the same expressions over and over again to ensure he got the length of the book to novel-length (in French, you must have 180000 characters for a book to go from a novella to a novel (or 'romain')). It became quite tedious. I felt I was looking for a slip of an 'e' in the text and obsessing with the missing 'e' and that this distracted me from really enjoying the book itself. I gave it three stars because technically it was a nearly impossible task, but it does not make for great reading. I have not attempted his Life Manual where he describes each of 100 apartments in a Parisian building because I was put off by this book. I guess for me the issue was similar to the questions I ask myself when I looked at a priceless Chinese jade sculpture of a cabbage with drops of dew and flies at the Taipei Palace Museum in Taiwan that looked so realistic that I thought if I reached out and touched it, it would be wet. No one will ever know who made it, but it was certainly a collective work that took decades. Is it craft? Certainly, but is it art? That is a similar question I asked myself about The Disparition, is it art or craft? I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder so you'll have to decide for yourself. I sided with craft on this one.