SOURCE: "Doing Theory," in Paragraph, Vol. 12, No. 1, March 1989, pp. 56-64.

In the following essay, Ribière questions the effectiveness and appropriateness of some of Perec's self-imposed literary constraints. Ribière suggests that, by not making clear what constraints were in effect in various works, Perec was working counter to the bond he wished to forge with the reader.

Georges Perec stressed his concern for the practice rather than the theory of literature as witness two statements separated by an interval of eleven years:

La fonction de l'écrivain est d'écrire et non de penser; et même si l'on peut accorder quelque crédit aux réflexions qu'il lui arrive d'émettre sur sa production, elles ne sauraient en aucun cas constituer une théorie.

(The writer's function is to write and not to think; and even if one can give some credence to the comments he...