(by Georges Perec, translated by David Bellos)
As David Bellos explains in his introduction, “Around 1968, a French computer company set itself the challenge of finding artists willing to have a go at using the machines that it made.” In this case, Perec “accepted the challenge to write as a computer functions,” and this delightful little book is the result. There are no capital letters or punctuation, but it’s nevertheless readable and often funny.
As the title suggests, it’s about an employee asking his boss for a raise—but it’s structured as the loops and branches of an algorithm or flow-chart: “either mr x is at his desk or mr x is not at his desk,” and things proceed from there. There is a lot of repetition but also variation, which adds to the humor and poignancy of the book: mostly the company is described as “the organisation of which you are an employee” but it’s also “the organisation which toys with you,” “the organisation of which you are an exploitee,” “the tentacular organisation that provides your meagre means of subsistence,” et cetera. There are so many great moments: your boss tells you to come back in the afternoon, but what if he swallows a fish bone at lunch or gets food poisoning from rotten eggs? What if his kids have measles and therefore so does he? As time passes and the protagonist circumperambulates those office hallways over and over, what if the boss’s grandkids have measles and therefore so does he? What if you try to ask for a raise but because of the way you tried to build up to your request, your boss says “so we need to plan another project” and you stupidly say yes and now you’re the one having to plan this new project, which wasn’t what you were going for at all? Maybe you don’t need that raise, maybe there’s something else: “you could also bet on the horses but you already do bet on horses.” Guess you’d better just ask for the raise (again).
PS: of course someone wrote a review of this book in the style of the book itself: go read it, it’s excellent.
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