Portrait of a Man Known as Il Condottiere

by Georges Perec, David Bellos (Translator), David Bellos (Introduction)

Overview

Puckish and playful, Georges Perec infused avant-garde and experimental fiction with a wit and wonder that belied the serious concerns and concepts that underpinned it. A prominent member of the OuLiPo, and an abiding influence on fiction writers today, Perec used formal constraints to dazzling effect in such works as A Void—a murder mystery that contains nary an “e”—and Life A User’s Manual, in which an apartment building, systematically canvassed, unfolds secrets and, ultimately offers a reflection on creation, destruction, and the devotion to art.
 
Before embarking on these experiments, however, Perec tried his hand at a relatively straightforward novel, Portrait of a Man. His first book, it was rejected by publishers when he submitted it in 1960, after which he filed it away. Decades after Perec’s death, David Bellos discovered the manuscript, and through his translation we have a chance to enjoy it in English for the first time. What fans will find here is a thriller that combines themes that would remain prominent in Perec’s later work, such as art forgery, authenticity, and murder, as well as craftsman Gaspard Winckler, who whose namesakes play major roles in Life A User’s Manual and W or The Memory of Childhood.
 
Engaging and entertaining on its own merits, and gaining additional interest when set in the context of Perec’s career, Portrait of a Man is sure to charm the many fans of this postmodern master.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226054254
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	04/10/2015
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Georges Perec (1936–1982) was a French writer and a member of OuLiPo. David Bellos is professor of French and Italian and comparative literature at Princeton University, where he also serves as the director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication.

Editorial Reviews

03/30/2015
In this absurdist thriller by the late Perec (Life: A User's Manual), written in 1960, an art forger finds himself on the run and in an existential quandary after his attempt to produce a Renaissance masterpiece goes south. The story begins just after counterfeiter Gaspard Winckler murders his dealer, Anatole Madera. Winckler is trapped in his subterranean studio with one of Madera's thugs guarding the only exit. Via stream-of-consciousness recollections, the painter explains how he got himself into this predicament. Tasked by Madera with forging a “top-of-the-range Renaissance piece," Winckler set out to create a new masterwork by Antonello da Messina, whose 1475 portrait of a mercenary gives this early Perec manuscript its title. But Winckler viewed the result as a failure (“This was not an artist grasping the world and his own self in a single glance; it was the somewhat haphazard and decidedly murky back-and-forth of a constructed ambiguity... where the artist was just a minor demon of truth made uncertain"), and for reasons that remain unclear, he slashed Madera's throat. Winckler eventually escapes the studio and recounts his tale to a friend. Perec's first novel bears traces of the experimentalism that the French author was later known for, sliding between first-, second-, and third-person narration (with occasional forays into Nouveau Roman–esque no-person narration). The premise is interesting enough, but this resurrected trunk novel will primarily appeal to diehard Perec fans. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"There are glimpses of Perec's future greatness."

New Yorker

2015-01-29
"Leonardo is dead, Antonello is dead, and I'm not feeling too well myself." Thus we read in French experimentalist Perec's long-forgotten, rejected debut, now rescued from the dustbin of literary history. One sympathizes with the Gallimard editor who turned the book down nearly 60 years ago for its "excessive clumsiness and chatter." Though there's no real sign of the Oulipo extravagance that would follow, there's plenty of busy wordplay, a plot that's not always coherent, and a curiously doubled narrative that turns from internal monologue, complete with bursts of furious paddling down the stream of consciousness ("A single movement and then curtains....One thrust would be enough....His arm raised, the glint of the blade...a single movement"), to more or less ordinary expository prose, though always with a twist. (Or a thrust, for that matter.) The plot, as it is, is fairly slender: A well-born young man with mad skills and loose ethics meets up with an art forger and goes to work revising the history of the Renaissance, churning out an occasional impressionist masterpiece in the bargain, while keeping his cover working the legit side of the art world. Naturally, young Gaspard soon aspires to outdo himself, creating a supposedly unknown work by an Italian master that will be the glory of his career—and accepted at once as the real goods. Blood figures into the plot, as does then Communist Yugoslavia. Not surprisingly, given the time of composition, there are some Camus-ian moments ("Nothing is easy. Nothing is quick. Everything is wrong."). There are also plenty of loose threads, befitting a work that recounts "the double, triple, quadruple game of a fake artist pastiching his own pastiche." The translation is pleasingly idiomatic, the translator's introduction illuminating. Perec's yarn, though, will largely be of interest to students of postwar French literature and social history, who will find that it makes a nice if not especially memorable puzzle.

Kirkus Reviews

"A fully realized and mature work of fiction that will provide Perec's fans a fuller view of his oeuvre, can serve as an accessible entry point for readers who are new to its author."

New York Journal of Books

"There are glimpses of Perec's future greatness."

New Yorker