A life that is below average, trivial, and useless.
Things and places that are so familiar that they go unnoticed.

A man stands in front of 24 rue de Villain.
The man's name is Georges Perec.
Perec is considered a representative writer of late 20th-century French literature and one of the most important writers of 20th-century Europe, known for his unique experimental spirit, sensibility, and original linguistic sense.
He loiters in front of 24 Rue de Villain, where he spent his childhood, but turns away, unable to enter the building.
His father died in World War II when he was four, and his mother was taken to Auschwitz and died when he was six.
24 Rue de Villain was a place filled with memories of his childhood with his parents, but it was a great trauma for Perec that most of those memories had been forgotten.


Since Rue de Vilain was slated for demolition as part of the Paris urban development project, number 24, Perec's childhood home, was also destined to disappear completely within a few years.
But despite the fact that it was not an easy place to face mentally, he returned to Rue de Vilain to start a project he called 'Places' (Les Lieux).
Through the 'Places' project, Perec planned to select twelve places with a special connection to him and record them over a period of about twelve years, and regularly recording 'Rue des Vilains' was naturally at the core of this project.
He chose two of the twelve locations each month, described them, and then sealed an envelope with the manuscript and a subway ticket, movie ticket, pamphlet, etc. related to the location.
Perec believed that because it is time that ultimately destroys memories, the act of recording familiar places and objects was a resistance against the tyranny of time.


Georges Perec's "Below Ordinary Things," soon to be published by Green Ray, contains nine essays in different styles, including the text "Rue de Villain."
All nine texts deal with the theme of 'everyday writing', dealing with ordinary things, but in slightly different ways.
It is no exaggeration to say that this one book contains all of the writing styles that Perec attempted during his lifetime.

What happens every day and returns every day, the common, the everyday, the obvious, the ordinary, the mediocre, the below-average, the noise, the familiar.
How can we describe them, how can we ask questions about them, how can we describe them?
--- p.16

Let's ask questions about something familiar.
The problem is that we are already used to it.
We don't question the familiar, the familiar doesn't question us, and it doesn't seem to pose any particular problem.
We live with it without thinking about it, as if the familiar did not convey any questions or answers and did not carry any information.
It is no longer even a condition of life, it becomes a kind of numbness.
We sleep dreamlessly throughout our lives.
But where does our life lie? Where is our body? Where is our space?
--- p.17

Let's describe your street.
Let's describe another street.
And let's compare.
Let's make a list of your pockets and bags.
Let us ask ourselves about the history, purpose, and future of each of the objects we have taken out there. (Omitted) It doesn't really matter to me that these questions are so fragmentary that they hardly require any method, and are at best mere plans.
What's even more important to me is that these questions seem trivial and useless.
That is precisely what makes these questions as important, if not more important, than the countless others we have tried in vain to grasp the truth.

--- p.18