Check out our Spring 2019 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art & culture. We welcome new publishers Arquine, Atelier Éditions, August Editions, The Design Museum, London, Eakins Press, Editions Patrick Frey, Fulgur Press, Kasmin, Lisson Gallery, Marciano Art Foundation, Marsilio Editori, Onomatopee and Ridinghouse to our list in 2019!
By Georges Perec. Introduction and translation by Mara Cologne Wythe-Hall.
“In the beginning was the pun,” Samuel Beckett once wrote. And so it was that Georges Perec brought the good word to his friends and acquaintances on a yearly basis, as an expression of his best wishes for the New Year. Wishes gathers together these ten pamphlets of homophonic wordplay that Perec sent out from 1970 until his death in 1982, printed at his own expense in limited quantities. This paean to the pun consists of a series of short prose pieces, each concluding with a list of the everyday bits of language lying at their root. English proverbs, Latin phrases, the names of musicians, filmmakers, novelists and book titles are all fodder for Perec’s homophonic translations: John Coltrane turns into an anecdote about a wanderer with a severe ring around the collar; Antonioni’s first movie transforms into a prophecy of a murderous holiday; the phrase “All’s well that ends well” becomes a pregnant cow named Alice hailed by a drunk Satan; and Maurice Ravel proves to be a warning against corpses with a predilection for root vegetables.
These texts and their marriage of sound to meaning present a challenge to any translation, and bring into stark relief the choices translators are often forced to make. This English edition sidesteps such choices, offering two alternate translations: a traditional one focused on the literal content of Perec’s texts, and another focused on their formal phonological play.
Georges Perec (1936–82) was a French novelist, essayist and filmmaker whose linguistic talents ranged from fiction to crossword puzzles to palindromes. Winner of the prix Renaudot in 1965 for his first novel, Things, and the prix Médicis in 1978 for his most acclaimed novel, Life A User’s Manual, Perec was also a member of Oulipo.
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FORMAT: Pbk, 6 x 9 in. / 240 pgs. LIST PRICE: U.S. $17.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $25.5 ISBN: 9781939663337 PUBLISHER: Wakefield Press AVAILABLE: 7/24/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock
Published by Wakefield Press. By Georges Perec. Introduction and translation by Mara Cologne Wythe-Hall.
“In the beginning was the pun,” Samuel Beckett once wrote. And so it was that Georges Perec brought the good word to his friends and acquaintances on a yearly basis, as an expression of his best wishes for the New Year. Wishes gathers together these ten pamphlets of homophonic wordplay that Perec sent out from 1970 until his death in 1982, printed at his own expense in limited quantities. This paean to the pun consists of a series of short prose pieces, each concluding with a list of the everyday bits of language lying at their root. English proverbs, Latin phrases, the names of musicians, filmmakers, novelists and book titles are all fodder for Perec’s homophonic translations: John Coltrane turns into an anecdote about a wanderer with a severe ring around the collar; Antonioni’s first movie transforms into a prophecy of a murderous holiday; the phrase “All’s well that ends well” becomes a pregnant cow named Alice hailed by a drunk Satan; and Maurice Ravel proves to be a warning against corpses with a predilection for root vegetables.
These texts and their marriage of sound to meaning present a challenge to any translation, and bring into stark relief the choices translators are often forced to make. This English edition sidesteps such choices, offering two alternate translations: a traditional one focused on the literal content of Perec’s texts, and another focused on their formal phonological play.
Georges Perec (1936–82) was a French novelist, essayist and filmmaker whose linguistic talents ranged from fiction to crossword puzzles to palindromes. Winner of the prix Renaudot in 1965 for his first novel, Things, and the prix Médicis in 1978 for his most acclaimed novel, Life A User’s Manual, Perec was also a member of Oulipo.
