Georges Perec: Catatan Tentang Tangga dan Dinding

Hanya penulis segila Georges Perec akan isi masa dan imaginasinya dengan deskripsi dan meditasi tentang ruang-ruang di dalam sebuah apartmen. Objek harian menggantikan peranan watak dalam dunia Perec. Melalui tulisannya, kita tidak berbicara dengan manusia, tetapi dengan objek-objek kaku dan tidak berynawa. Tetapi bukankah manusia sekarang pun sudah semakin menjadi objek-objek yang kaku?

Mungkin untuk memahami manusia, kita tidak boleh melakukannya melalui manusia secara langsung, tetapi kita harus mendekati dan memahami manusia melalui benda-benda di sekelilingnya.

Melalui objek-objek yang kaku dan tidak berguna. 

Zadie Smith kata apabila kita selesai membaca buku Species of Spaces kita tidak akan boleh berfikir tentang ruang dan objek dengan cara yang sama. Baca sahaja dua contoh ini kalau anda tidak percaya:

Staircases

We don't think enough about staircases.

Nothing was more beautiful in old houses than the staircases. Nothing is uglier, colder, meaner, in today's apartment buildings. 

We should learn to live more on staircases. But how?

Wall

I put a picture up on a wall. Then I forget there is a wall. I no longer know what there is behind this wall, I no longer know there is a wall, I no longer know this wall is a wall, I no longer know what a wall is. I no longer know that in my apartment there are walls, and that if there weren't any walls, there would be no apartment. The wall is no longer what delimits and defines the place where I live, that which separates it from the other places where other people live, it is nothing more than a support for the picture. But I also forget the picture, I no longer look at it, I no longer know how to look at it. I have put the picture on the wall so as to forget there was a wall, but in forgetting the wall, I forget the picture, too. There are pictures because there are walls. We have to be able to forget there are walls, and have found no better way to do that pictures. Pictures efface walls. But walls kill pictures. So we need continually to be changing, either the wall or the picture, to be forever putting other pictures up on the walls, or else constantly moving the picture from one wall to another. 

We could write on our walls (as we sometimes write on the fronts of houses, on fences round building sites and on the walls of prisons), but we do it only very rarely.