Writing the City

In 1969 the French writer Georges Perec embarked on a writing project that would oblige him to be physically present in a certain place in Paris -- one of twelve places actually -- in every month for the next twelve years. The project was called simply ‘Places’ (Lieux). He never completed it, but even what he did complete runs to some four hundred pages in the Editions du Seuil volume published in 2022 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the author's disappearance. In this talk, I will discuss a number of questions arising from this strange project, not least: Why? I will also explain why Perec was unable to set pen to paper before receiving, in May 1969, a letter from an eminent specialist in mathematical statistics based at Chapel Hill, North Carolina…