W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec (Book Analysis) by BrightSummaries.com

Author:BrightSummaries.com
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
Published: 2017-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

A distorted autobiographical pact

When the author tries to take his readers with him in his search for his childhood memories, he makes a commitment to them: he promises them accuracy and honesty (as far as possible, since in reality he remembers almost nothing of his childhood). In the second chapter that he narrates, the author states that he will try to recall his past, which is crucial in allowing him to understand his present and his future:

“Even if I have the help only of yellowing snapshots, a handful of eyewitness accounts and a few paltry documents to prop up my implausible memories, I have no alternative but to conjure up what for too many years I called the irrevocable” (p. 12).

Rekindling his memories by any means available to him appears here to the author as a necessity in order to understand his identity. However, he does not guarantee that his memory can be fully trusted: “the many variations and imaginary details I have added in the telling of them – in speech or in writing – have altered them greatly” (p. 13). He therefore makes a pact with the reader: the author commits to giving the reader the information that is closest to reality, without this information necessarily being true.

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