num_pages: 55
description: One overcast weekend in October 1974 Georges Perec set out in quest of the infraordinary: the humdrum the non-event the everyday--what happens as he put it when nothing happens. His choice of locale was Place Saint-Sulpice where ensconced behind first one cafe window then another he spent three days recording everything to pass through his field of vision: the people walking by; the buses and driving-school cars caught in their routes; the pigeons moving suddenly en masse; a wedding (and then a funeral) at the church in the center of the square; the signs symbols and slogans littering everything; and the darkness that finally absorbs it all. In An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris Perec compiled a melancholic slightly eerie and oddly touching document in which existence boils down to rhythm writing turns into time and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin.
language: English
title: An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
publisher: Wakefield Press