Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris

Georges Perec • Rizzoli

ISBN-10: 0984115528 · ISBN-13: 978‑0984115525 · 2010

Live offer for this book: 13 live copies of this book from $12 (as of 2026-09-05).

Dimensions: 17.5 × 11.2 × 1.5 cm

Canonical book record

Completeness 43

Cover quality: good

2manybooks editorial

"Take it with you to any cafe in any city, and Perec will be both your drinking partner and your tour guide, drawing your attention to each little detail coming and going." -Ian Klaus, CityLab One overcast weekend in October 1974, Georges Perec set out in quest of the "infraordinary" the humdrum, the non-event, the everyday--"what happens," as he put it, "when nothing happens." His choice of locale was Place Saint-Sulpice, where, ensconced behind first one cafe window, then another, he spent three days recording everything to pass through his field of vision: the people walking by; the buses and driving-school cars caught in their routes; the pigeons moving suddenly en masse; a wedding (and then a funeral) at the church in the center of the square; the signs, symbols and slogans littering everything; and the darkness that finally absorbs it all. In An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris , Perec compiled a melancholic, slightly eerie and oddly touching document in which existence boils down to rhythm, writing turns into time and the line between the empirical and the surreal grows surprisingly thin.

Book metadata

Marketplace observations

13 live copies of this book from $12 (as of 2026-09-05).

Contributors

Community signals

Have: 5 · Like: 8 · Rating: 4.2 / 5 (14)