Georges Perec had a great talent for writing seriously about matters that most writers would have regarded as beneath their station. Such things as the objects to be seen on his work table, compiling a list of all food and drink that passed his lips in 1974, neighbourhoods, streets, apartments, the date of his birth and the art of arranging books. So all my Perec-related books came down from the shelf for an exercise in rearrangement. A number of possibilities suggested themselves as follows:
by height from high to low or reverse
by date of publication
by date of acquisition
alphabetised by title
by colour on the spine
by pagination
by font size
by mass displacement
by ISBN
by degree of reader satisfaction
by degree of water resistance
by degree of calorific energy
by vertical stacking on a horizontal axis
Some of these ideas had to be rejected on the grounds that experimentation with fire and water would involve irreversible damage. Others were simply too difficult to ascertain - popularity ratings on goodreads only go so far. Frankly, there were some that made very little sense, suggesting an element of desperation creeping in. Vertical stacking implied a more sculptural approach - an assemblage rather than an arrangement. Which lead directly to the photographs posted here. When the exercise was complete the books returned to the shelf where they presently rest between Jacques Prévert and Jean Claude Izzo.
