There is something almost Zen about these works to me, in the exploration of repetition, in the invitation to consider the smallest moments as worthy of our deep attention. Queneau’s and Perec’s books—about a bus, about a city square—dare the reader to look and look and look at the same thing, the same place, the same minor event. They knock on the door of mundane reality until something else begins to open up. Something like transcendence.