Perec and Matthews

While reading Perec’s A Void, one of the first aspects that struck me, after learning that he wrote his novel without the use of the letter ‘e’, was that the story was originally written in France. So, not only did Perec accomplish the feat of writing a coherent story sans ‘s’, the translator was able to complete the same task for the English readers. Obviously, Perec was aware of the predicament faced by those readers uneducated in French. What Matthews acknowledges in this chapter is that translations are limited, stating “a language says what it can say, and that’s that” (69). Some words simply embody the idea a writer is trying to convey. While translating, the translator more likely than not had to stretch certain synonyms, as the original, best fitting English word had an ‘e’. While accomplishing a lipogrammatic story such as A Void is quite impressive, Perec knowingly limited his audience as his knew translation of his novel would cause problems. Lipogrammatic stories and other works of the Oulipo serve mostly the purpose of challenging their writers into follow a very limited structure. These works, while creative in their approach, do seem slightly counteractive in the strive for innovation as they are essentially limiting format, audience, and essentially literature.