It would be churlish not to acknowledge that Portrait of a Man is a major literary event; the publication of a long-lost novella by a major 20th century novelist. Unfortunately, being a major literary event is not the same as being a major work of literature.

I’m not familiar enough with Perec’s ouvre to be excited by the parallels between this book and his better-known works, and there are many references and connections that will please the cognoscenti but elude someone such as myself. I can only review this book based in its inherent interest and, to me, it simply does not measure up.

The story is about Gaspard Winckler, a forger who commits a murder. The book starts with Winckler describing the immediate aftermath of the murder and his desperate attempts to escape the scene. The second part of the book essentially retells the story in the form of a dialogue between Winckler and another character, where Winckler enlarges on his forging career and why he committed the murder.

Characterisation is almost entirely absent; the victim and all of the supporting characters are pretty much cyphers. Perec’s story suggests that Winckler’s persona is just as much a forgery as his art works so, in the end, there is nobody in the novel with a complete backstory that we can identify with. There is no nemesis pursuing Winckler over his crime, and no real development of the plot beyond the murder and what led up to it.

This was Perec’s first work of fiction, and the book was rejected by the publishers; maybe they were right. ( )

Gaspard Winckler, el héroe de la novela, se ha dedicado durante meses a pintar un Condotiero falso, una copia perfecta que no tiene nada que envidiar al expuesto en el Louvre que pintara Antonello da Messina en 1475. Pero Gaspard, príncipe de los falsificadores, no es más que el simple ejecutor de las órdenes de Anatole Madera. Y, como en una novela policíaca, la primera página del libro se abre con el asesinato de Madera por Winckler. ¿Por qué esa muerte? ¿Por qué Gaspard Winckler siente que ha fracasado en su proyecto de igualar a Antonello da Messina? ¿Qué buscaba queriéndose convertir en un virtuoso de lo falso? ¿Qué deseaba captar en esa imagen de fuerza y de poder que transmite el rostro del guerrero? ¿Y por qué vive el asesinato de Madera como una liberación? ( )

It's Georges Perec - author of my very favourite book of all time - so it has to be good, doesn't it? And indeed it is.

I'd read about this novel - Perec's second, but never published in his lifetime - in David Bellos' monumental biography of Perec, so when it finally turned up in print I had to have it. It's taken me a couple of years to get around to reading it. A curious work in two parts (the second is a retelling of the first), it features Gaspard Winckler, also the name of one of the main characters in "Life a User's Manual", though it's not clear if they're one and the same. It concerns a frustrated forger who murders his paymaster. Reputed to be difficult because it's told in the first,second and third persons, I didn't find it so at all. I'm not at risk of giving any plot spoilers because there isn't much of a plot, to be honest. But that doesn't matter. It's an entertaining meditation on creativity and genius, written with Perec's characteristic wit.

By coincidence, I had just read Thomas Bernhard's "Old Masters", also a contemplation of a single portrait and artistic genius in which nothing much happens, and the two worked well as a piece. ( )

A fascinating unpublished early novella by the writer more famous for Life: A User's Manual. It tells the story of Gaspard Winckler, an art forger and his obsession with a failed attempt to create an original painting to match the renaissance master Antonello's Condottiere, better known in English as Portrait of a Man. Winckler tells his story first as a stream of consciousness narration and then by answering questions, as a form of cathartic confession after murdering his patron. It is difficult not to read this at least partially as a metaphor for the novelist's own struggle to create his first work, but also a meditation on the nature of creativity and originality in the arts.

Like all of Perec's work the language is playful and entertaining, which creates obvious challenges for the translator.
The translation is by David Bellos, who was not only the translator of the best known English versions of much of Perec's other work, but also the writer of a brilliant book on the art of translation, Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything. Bellos had a hand in unearthing the manuscript of this book while researching a biography of Perec, and has added an introduction to this version. ( )

http://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/perecs-lost-work-portrai... ( )