Perec's Disappearance

[Joseph Conte]

Anyone particularly interested in maximalist fiction such as Pynchon's 
_Gravity's Rainbow_, Gaddis's _J R_, or Barth's _Letters_, might well 
enjoy Perec's long novel based on the denizens of an apartment block in 
Paris, _Life: A User's Manual_ (Godine, 1987).  There are a number of 
procedural constraints that govern the text (though not as extreme as the 
absence of "e" in French), yet the stories told in each section are, I 
found, wonderfully riveting.

Joseph Conte