Life a User's Maual

I thought Perec's description was interesting but hard to understand. I think the main focus of his writing's were how a puzzle could be used to tell a story but its not easy and has to have a lot of work go into it. I think another benefit these have is that they are easy to compare to one another and tell some kind of story especially since each puzzle can have a meaning. you to believe that many things we encounter everyday can have a special meaning and you could even write a story about that. Although the way Perec approaches it and explains it might be difficult to understand, it is a very creative technique.

Life, A User's Manual

One of the main things that I enjoyed about Life A User's Manual is how descriptive it was. At times, it was a little hard to follow and felt like there was a lot going on. That was by far one of the least enjoyable things about this reading. Most of the time, it was just very confusing and I often had to go over and re-read things multiple times, which you should do with any reading, but this one definitely did not come with ease. After being breaking everything thing down a bit, I was able to understand the narrative, dialog, etc. more throughly.

The method is very captivating, but also confusing as well. I think the whole set up of it is quite unique and seems to be very helpful to the create writing process. It allows you to take your creativity one step further. First, your just putting words on a piece of paper. Next, your expanding them so much more further than can ever be imagined. By doing methods like George Perec's it helps writers to branch out of their normal writing patterns and explore a different realm. Since Perec's piece was a bit more on the crowded and confusing side, maybe he wanted to game to reflect that. He didn't want this project to be just any old walk in the park. It's weird though how you can take this type of method and turn it into a story. Well, not necessarily weird, but just a little out of the ordinary. I'm intrigued to see where our class will take their stories based on this method...

I think this method will be one of the hardest ones that we will have to tackle in the class just based on my first impression of its complexity.

Life a User's Manual

The Preamble and the brief description of Perec's method was extremely confusing. I understand that the jigsaw puzzle and chessboard are prime analogies for the method of writing; both are complex and challenge the participant. Likewise, Perec's method challenges the reader to read the story differently. I enjoyed reading the excerpts mostly because it was unique. The descriptive manner of the piece added to its success. It was intresting to read mostly because it was as if someone was simply objective; this style of writing is rare in fiction. More often than not, some sort of emtion is outwardly revealed in the writing. In this piece, Perec creates a storyline and presents the setting and background through past events and annecdotes only. This is especially odd to read considering that most stories are told in the present tense and the story unfolds in a sequence of events.

Life A User's Manual

The description given in Life A User's Manual was slightly confusing to me at first. I didn't quite understand how a puzzle or game could be used to tell a story, and I get where the apartment building came in to play. I guess I still really don't get that part. But when the writer explained his method by using the smaller square and how he could put that information into three chapters, I began to understand. This would seem interesting to me if I could actually do it and come up with something like the author did. His writing is obviously much longer and more complex than i think i could ever come up with, but he did work on it for a very long time.

I enjoyed reading about the jigsaw puzzle technique. I never would have thought of a jegsaw puzzle as a way to tell a story. Now, I'm going to be looking at a jigsaw puzzle in an entirely different way the next time I attempt to put one together.

Response to George Perce's "Life A User's Manual"

After reading the preface for this week's reading, I was expecting the actual text of Bartlebooth's Story to be much more random and complicated. From the description of Perce's method I did not always understand how the story would all add up together considering the movement of the writing elements. However, I was suprised while reading the actual story to see that the narrative had a very nice flow to it. I was definately looking to see if I could point out the transitions of elements. Nevertheless, using the lives of all the people in a single building and webbing them together seemed to work out nicely as far as coherients goes. I enjoyed this reading, however I feel when it is my turn to take a run at this sort of technic, the outcome may not be as fluent. After all, George Perce had been working on this styem for a long time.

ITALO CALVINO EXCERPT READING FOR 04NOV

It is a story on how to set the mood for reading a book, and or how to select a book to read. Basically a story on getting prepared to get a good book to read and how to make yourself comfortable. I guess if you don't know already how to do so, now you know. I guess that can be creative in it's ownself.

PEREC'S READING

The Perec's users manuel was helpful. I like how he started with the jigsaw puzzle example. i never thought of a jigsaw puzzle as telling a story, but he describes as made as a story by the maker, it was always just a puzzle to me.But now I can look at in a different way next time I try to put the pieces together. In Life Manuel Book 2 part 3, Cellars, that was different describling whats in cellars the foods.I fopund that interesting and useful.