Thomas Clerc's 'Intérieur' Maps His Apartment as a Writing Machine

Thomas Clerc's book 'Intérieur' (Gallimard, 2013) undertakes an exhaustive cartography of his apartment at rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin in Paris, where he moved on September 11, 2001. The work synthesizes two opposing models: Xavier de Maistre's digressive 'Voyage autour de ma chambre' and Georges Perec's rule-based 'Life A User's Manual'. Clerc, who has previously published 'Paris, musée du 21e siècle' and 'L'Homme qui tua Roland Barthes', as well as edited Roland Barthes' lectures on 'Le Neutre' and Guillaume Dustan's complete works, wrote all his books in this same apartment. The narrative progresses room by room, but encounters a limit at his library of over 700 books, which he defers to a future project. The text balances conceptual rigor with wit, and builds dramatic tension through threats both external (doorbells, water damage, meat hanging from a balcony) and internal (the fear that ornament is a crime under modernist law, as per Le Corbusier). Patrice Blouin's review in artpress praises the book as a 'domestic thriller' and a 'modern salon for bachelor machines'.