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"Cantatrix Sopranica L. and other scientific writings" by Georges Perec

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parody, pastiche, load, cartoon? Let the reader to characterize a name all texts gathered here, and sometimes reveal a figure unknown to Perec, one of the scientist.

Notice Emmanuel

Dear reader who lives in the hard science and you relax in the literature.

Or you who work daily in the field of humanities. You finally
is loving critics and literary interpretations of obscure works that are not less. Cantatrix Sopranica L. is a small collection of texts that you can not be unexpected as I fail to appreciate.

Georges Perec is one of the most prominent members of the OULIPO , this workshop creative and experimental literature created by Raymond Queneau we talked about on this blog a few months ago, with criticism of Quackgrass .

is an author who was very productive but is generally known for its award-winning novels such Life user manual (which I aspire to read soon) or Things . Yet a man of science as letters engaged in a process of exploring the possibilities of language and writing, he seems to have made her creativity in many directions, including that which concerns us here: scientific writing fictitious.

Because that's what the five texts are compiled in this collection of barely a hundred Pages: pseudo-scientific texts that mimic or away, both in substance over form, the archetypes of the genre.

Article eponymous Cantatrix Sopranica L., the most famous of the five, is naturally the most brilliant and most delicious to the doctor I am. But it is also an admirable text for the many levels of interpretation clearly intended by the author: the neophyte will appreciate the puns created by the names of authors cited in references (McHullot, Mac Haskett & Massinture; Payre & Tairnelle ...), while the non-specialist scientific guffaw at the resumption of the exact structure of an article Scientific and approximate translation of the abstract and the most connoisseurs will enjoy the scientific references that Perec sharp turn away brilliantly (the somatotopic organization of the cerebral cortex becomes tomatotopique, abbreviations designating the basal ganglia brain-STN, GPI, GPE ... - become SNCF, CNRS, CHU ...).

Obviously I am less expert to judge the other texts, aspects of which still attracts me: the seriousness with which is admirably addressed the question of crossings between cyclic imaginary butterflies and interpretation of delusional fantasy of a fragment text written by the enigmatic Raymond Roussel at the beginning of last century are just a few examples.

To read or not?

If you're tight or not really know anything in the world of science, no. But otherwise, if you are interested in science or even more if you befriend every day you will appreciate the extraordinary inventiveness of Georges Perec. Especially since these few seemingly innocuous texts if raise genuine philosophical question as their "scientific" makes them appear realistic and valid. So it is a pure figment of imagination of a man ...