Perec and Benabou

For this weeks readings we were asked to read the rest of Georges Perec's novel "A Void" and Marcel Benabou's essay "Rule and Constraint." In Benabou's essay he reiterates Perec's sentiment that constraints allow for further literary expression. Benabou states in his essay that people accept the rule of literature but they don't accept the constraints. He writes that language should be used as an object instead of a rule, it is meant to be formed and freed from it's previous obligation. Perec's novel depicts exactly this because Perec set out to create a work of fiction that would leave out the letter "e" and while he succeeds in doing so, he is also able to have his plot come to fruition and come together in the end. Something I found interesting about the end of "A Void " was that Perec wrote a piece that not only took out the letter "e" but also the letter "a." This was interesting to me because it made me wonder that when Perec decided to leave out those two letters he became inspired to write his novella "Les Revenentes," in which he leaves out every vowel besides "e."