I have to start by saying this book is nothing like any book I have read before in the fact that there aren’t just two stories going on, but one being an autobiography and the other being fiction. In saying this, I did not enjoy the stories as much as I was hoping to, as I was often confused as the author jumped between the two stories. I also had difficulty in piecing the two stories together, and understanding why the author chose to combine them.
Of the two stories, I was definitely more drawn to Perec’s autobiography of his childhood. It was really interesting to me that the idea of memory was a recurring theme throughout the story, as Perec chose to write a story about his childhood, while not having remembered a large portion of it. His loss of memory is demonstrated multiple times throughout the entire story, as we read on page 28 “The memories I have of my father are not many.” and again on page 122 “(that doesn’t mean she didn’t come: it means I don’t remember).” I almost felt like it was necessary for the author to recount his memories from his childhood, in an attempt to understand and cope with what he went through. As both of his parents were taken from him due to the war, where his father died fighting and his mother died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, it is quite obvious the pain and trauma that Perec endured as a child that could have caused some gaps in his memory. I felt sympathy for Perec as not having many childhood memories, especially ones with your deceased parents, would be tough to deal with throughout your life. “For years, I took comfort in such an absence of history: its objective crispness, its apparent obviousness, its innocence protected me; but what did they protect me from…” I feel that this line is a good illustration to what I had previously stated. His recollection of memories shows how he is trying to come to terms with what he went through as a child, which seems like something he had not previously done. In order to protect himself. He also talks a bit about how he imagines his parents would be if they had lived, which I think is another way of showing how he had attempted to cope with the situations he was put through.
My questions for this week:
Why do you think Perec chose to include the story of W along with his autobiography?
What relationship did those two stories share?