Café Perec

HAT HAPPENS when two people don't share the same sense of humor? They fail to connect. This is definitely true of me and the waiter in this Café Tabac in Place de Saint-Sulpice, a café known to some as Café Perec. Wittgenstein said that when two people don't share the same sense of humor, it's as if, whereas it's the custom between certain individuals for one to throw a ball to the other, and for the other person to catch it and throw it back, there are some who, instead of returning the ball, put it in their pocket. I decide to forget about the waiter with the different sense of humor and look across at the church of Saint-Sulpice. I am in the same observation post where, in the 1970s, Georges Perec decided to sit and catalogue this square, taking, a book that consists of a long, meticulous list of what he saw in the square over a period of three days. I remember reading it with great delight. Perec had noted down everything that happened when nothing was happening, excluding from his list only those things that might be deemed too important, and, in particular, anything that had already been “described, inventoried, photographed, talked about or registered.”