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Hynes for contour

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Diana Chan

This document summarizes the first chapter of George Perec's novel A Void. It describes the character Anton Vowl's ongoing struggle with insomnia. Despite various attempts to treat his insomnia, including visits to doctors, medication, and nasal surgery, Vowl continues to have chronic insomnia, though it is now less painful than before. The summary focuses on Vowl's failed efforts to overcome his insomnia through medical intervention and treatment.

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Executed Poetry1 I Le nègre negated, meagre, c'estmoi: my black face must preface murder for you. They were hanged back-to-back in York County Gaol, my bastard phantasms, my dastard fictions. Hot pepper of mothers bullwhipped till blood hisDecembral love iced over our hearts. I craved blue shoes, a yellow suit, and a green shirt – this is how history darkens against its medium. My colour is guttural, imperfect as you. .45's smashing into The Pallette Restaurant, we corral screaming, “Bleeding in Nova Scotia is just like drinking!” The job is to get money while silvery oxygen spills, deflating his pockets. 1 From:George Elliott Clarke. Execution Poems. Wolfville: Gaspereau Press, 2001. Print.
II I ingratiated the grinning hammer; this murder is 100 per cent dirt of our hands. Doc stared gravely, said, “You're going to die.” and more and more injustice. This courtroom's a parliament of jackals – the river goes cloudy with moon. I warrant you speak almost perfect English. Yours is to make malice more malicious. A is a cracked steeple; Y is a two-pronged gallows. VOICE OF THE PEOPLE: the stairs to the side entrance of the Gaol. The Double hanging was executed according to law. Finis the Tragedy of “George and Rue.”
Which At First Calls to Mind A Probably Familiar Story of A Drunk Man Waking Up with His Brain In A Whirl2 Incurably an insomniac, Anton Vowl, at midnight, fails to follow his whodunit's plot, picks up sounds of a craft in a narrow canal, acts too slowly to kill a windowsill shuffling indigo wasp. Vowl walks to his pantry, finds cold milk, pours a glass, drinks to last cold drop and thinks, how scrumptuous is milk at midnight. Lighting Havana cigar Anton puts on his radio, soaks in jazz, a foxtrot, a tango, worldly things from Zurich and Cambodia, finally a Davis Cup finish from Roland-Garros. Turning off radio sounds Vowl works out, doing situps and pushups until vision blurs, swims with transitory motifs: parabolic forms rising, a king as achromatic as a swan in a snowstorm and rising out of a diaphanous mist, Kandinskian diagonals drawing languid cartoon hands without thumbs. Without triumph Anton plums his visions for Jungian import, looks to satisfy his lust for signification as a paradigmatic configuration, but visions stand as only anagrams, insipid approximations; sighs all avatars of that vital quiddity which no occular straining will pull into focus, all ambiguous substitutions for a Grail of wisdom and authority which is now lost. Noticing his rug's optical illusions, Vowl, for four days and nights, looks hard at its oblong form to catch sight of an intrinsic strand looping around a cosmic vanishing point... but all to no good, not an inkling of insight and almost insanity. Vowl constructs only occult fiction from this rug's swimming and shifting, amorphous and polymorphous, form. With an aid of drugs - opium or laudanum or allobarbital or hot cocoa – Vowl grabs a half hour nap only to launch again into waking to confront his rug. Failing in confronting his rug conundrum, Anton will try anything to surpass his insomnia: Vowl wraps up in polka-dot pyjamas, kimonos, 2 A translation from prose to poetry of the first chapter in George Perec'sA Void.
saris from India or his birthday suit, configuring futon, hammock, sofa or divan, and in all positions taught to him by a yoga guru – on stomach and back – in bought accommodations, or his own, Anton's buzzing subconscious vision is still unsubsiding. This spurs a hospital trip and a chap from two doors down opts to accopanyVowl on this foray. A GP assays Anton's conditions, jots symptoms down invoking no particular diagnosis, passing him along to an otolaryngologist. Dr. Cochin, said otolaryngologist, prods Vowl's mouth, his larynx, nasal partition, his right sinus, ships him off for an X-Ray and looks for auto-intoxication with a platnium pick against Anton's skull. Cochin, flippant, stating an incision as solitary solution has Vowl cussing Fuck you, you … you quack I ought to go to an ophthalmologist! Conciliatory, Cochin, admits that With an immuno-transfusion or two I'll know what prognosis to adopt and starts his analysis of Anton. His diagnosis, sung to his typist, says: common cold, an auto-intoxication of his naso-pharynx, which could possibly put his olfactory circuit out of action. Cochin, assuring, imparts that this particular sinus-ablating incision has a long history, is hospitally sound and mostly vanilla. Vowl stays in hospital, surrounding him cots of mortuary carrion uncomposing all around him. Cochin inflicts Anton with soporifics such as Largactyl, Atarax and Procalmdiol. Around two days following Anton swallows a somnambulistifying drug, a liquid chloroform possibly, that knocks him unconscious. Cochin instills an incision in Vowl's olfactory tract, quickly scarifying nasal partition and cuts out a malignant fungus, a gross and small sinus mushroom, burns his wound shut. Following a bandaging and stitching of his wound, Vowl stays in hospital six days. At his accommodations again, Anton's chronic insomnia is continuing to this day, though now Vowl says, not as agonizingly painful as it always was.

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Hynes for contour

  • 1. Executed Poetry1 I Le nègre negated, meagre, c'estmoi: my black face must preface murder for you. They were hanged back-to-back in York County Gaol, my bastard phantasms, my dastard fictions. Hot pepper of mothers bullwhipped till blood hisDecembral love iced over our hearts. I craved blue shoes, a yellow suit, and a green shirt – this is how history darkens against its medium. My colour is guttural, imperfect as you. .45's smashing into The Pallette Restaurant, we corral screaming, “Bleeding in Nova Scotia is just like drinking!” The job is to get money while silvery oxygen spills, deflating his pockets. 1 From:George Elliott Clarke. Execution Poems. Wolfville: Gaspereau Press, 2001. Print.
  • 2. II I ingratiated the grinning hammer; this murder is 100 per cent dirt of our hands. Doc stared gravely, said, “You're going to die.” and more and more injustice. This courtroom's a parliament of jackals – the river goes cloudy with moon. I warrant you speak almost perfect English. Yours is to make malice more malicious. A is a cracked steeple; Y is a two-pronged gallows. VOICE OF THE PEOPLE: the stairs to the side entrance of the Gaol. The Double hanging was executed according to law. Finis the Tragedy of “George and Rue.”
  • 3. Which At First Calls to Mind A Probably Familiar Story of A Drunk Man Waking Up with His Brain In A Whirl2 Incurably an insomniac, Anton Vowl, at midnight, fails to follow his whodunit's plot, picks up sounds of a craft in a narrow canal, acts too slowly to kill a windowsill shuffling indigo wasp. Vowl walks to his pantry, finds cold milk, pours a glass, drinks to last cold drop and thinks, how scrumptuous is milk at midnight. Lighting Havana cigar Anton puts on his radio, soaks in jazz, a foxtrot, a tango, worldly things from Zurich and Cambodia, finally a Davis Cup finish from Roland-Garros. Turning off radio sounds Vowl works out, doing situps and pushups until vision blurs, swims with transitory motifs: parabolic forms rising, a king as achromatic as a swan in a snowstorm and rising out of a diaphanous mist, Kandinskian diagonals drawing languid cartoon hands without thumbs. Without triumph Anton plums his visions for Jungian import, looks to satisfy his lust for signification as a paradigmatic configuration, but visions stand as only anagrams, insipid approximations; sighs all avatars of that vital quiddity which no occular straining will pull into focus, all ambiguous substitutions for a Grail of wisdom and authority which is now lost. Noticing his rug's optical illusions, Vowl, for four days and nights, looks hard at its oblong form to catch sight of an intrinsic strand looping around a cosmic vanishing point... but all to no good, not an inkling of insight and almost insanity. Vowl constructs only occult fiction from this rug's swimming and shifting, amorphous and polymorphous, form. With an aid of drugs - opium or laudanum or allobarbital or hot cocoa – Vowl grabs a half hour nap only to launch again into waking to confront his rug. Failing in confronting his rug conundrum, Anton will try anything to surpass his insomnia: Vowl wraps up in polka-dot pyjamas, kimonos, 2 A translation from prose to poetry of the first chapter in George Perec'sA Void.
  • 4. saris from India or his birthday suit, configuring futon, hammock, sofa or divan, and in all positions taught to him by a yoga guru – on stomach and back – in bought accommodations, or his own, Anton's buzzing subconscious vision is still unsubsiding. This spurs a hospital trip and a chap from two doors down opts to accopanyVowl on this foray. A GP assays Anton's conditions, jots symptoms down invoking no particular diagnosis, passing him along to an otolaryngologist. Dr. Cochin, said otolaryngologist, prods Vowl's mouth, his larynx, nasal partition, his right sinus, ships him off for an X-Ray and looks for auto-intoxication with a platnium pick against Anton's skull. Cochin, flippant, stating an incision as solitary solution has Vowl cussing Fuck you, you … you quack I ought to go to an ophthalmologist! Conciliatory, Cochin, admits that With an immuno-transfusion or two I'll know what prognosis to adopt and starts his analysis of Anton. His diagnosis, sung to his typist, says: common cold, an auto-intoxication of his naso-pharynx, which could possibly put his olfactory circuit out of action. Cochin, assuring, imparts that this particular sinus-ablating incision has a long history, is hospitally sound and mostly vanilla. Vowl stays in hospital, surrounding him cots of mortuary carrion uncomposing all around him. Cochin inflicts Anton with soporifics such as Largactyl, Atarax and Procalmdiol. Around two days following Anton swallows a somnambulistifying drug, a liquid chloroform possibly, that knocks him unconscious. Cochin instills an incision in Vowl's olfactory tract, quickly scarifying nasal partition and cuts out a malignant fungus, a gross and small sinus mushroom, burns his wound shut. Following a bandaging and stitching of his wound, Vowl stays in hospital six days. At his accommodations again, Anton's chronic insomnia is continuing to this day, though now Vowl says, not as agonizingly painful as it always was.