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So the person who knows how to read, by following up various clues, he can unerringly arrive at the hidden meaning for himself.
St. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana
( . . . )
Georges Perec, W ou le souvenir d'enfance
Introduction
On page 111 of Perec's lipogrammatic novel La Disparition, we read:
Or donc, attaqua Amaury Conson un instant plus tard, j'ai lu un bon bout, sinon la plupart du Journal d'Anton Voyl. Il y fait cinq ou six fois allusion à un roman qui, dit-il, fournirait la solution. Il y a, par ci, par là, tout un tas d'indications qui, croyons-nous, ont pour but d'approfondir la signification du roman, sans pourtant nous affranchir tout à fait.
Let us briefly recall the plot of the novel. Anton Voyl has disappeared and his friends try to find clues or possible explanations. One of them, Amaury Conson, finds Voyl's journal. The journal has the same title as the novel within which it exists. Like Amaury Conson, we too are after written clues within La Disparition. The goal of my essay is to provide the above paragraph with the most complete sense possible, that is, in the words of Amaury Conson, to provide la solution to Perec's La Disparition, and to show how this solution helps to approfondir la signification du roman. Which will lead to the strong claim, I anticipate, that Georges Perec enters the Oulipo less through the work and ideas of Raymond Queneau than through those of Jorge Luis Borges.
A Curious Omission
The history of the reading of La Disparition is worth reviewing. Legend has it that when first published, some of its early reviewers failed to perceive the lipogram. They read it as an intriguing, even irritating novel, in unexplainably awkward language, telling convoluted stories of people doomed by hereditary damnations, with a narrative reminiscent of detective fiction. Other early readers were non-readers to a higher degree: Roland Barthes, for instance, who had been supportive of Perec at the beginning of his career, refused to so much as open the book. Barthes' example would prove to be paradigmatic as a response: La Disparition is one of those books that many people feel they need not go to the trouble of reading because they...