A Man Asleep

Georges Perec

2 ideas

  1. Student skips his exam and stops living

    On the morning of an exam, a 25-year-old sociology student in Paris does not get up, lets his roommate-less maid's room under the roof become his whole world, and stops answering letters, seeing friends, or pursuing any goal. He fills the months that follow with deliberately empty routines: aimless walks through Paris at night, solitaire, films watched at random, the same cheap meals, the same bowl of Nescafé. The experiment ends not with liberation but with his standing in the rain on the Place Clichy, waiting, having learned that indifference has changed nothing.

  2. Routine as anesthetic against meaning

    Repetitive, deliberately trivial habits such as patience games, counting, and aimless walking can be used to suppress choice and fill time without committing to anything. The mechanism works briefly by making days interchangeable, but the same interchangeability eventually becomes oppressive because nothing distinguishes one day from the next.

Save and mark ideas in the app