The Pattern In The Carpet: A Personal History With Jigsaws - Plot & Excerpts
The jigsaw as metaphor and simile is everywhere. It is used as a logo by Microsoft Word and by the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and it pops up on the screen of the Barclays Bank Hole in the Wall. Those instantly recognizable little shapes, dubbed in friendly fashion by Perec 'les bonhommes' (the little chaps), 'les croix de Lorraine' (the double crosses) and 'les croix' (the cross-bars), are familiar to us all, although they post-date Spilsbury and belong to the age of the fretsaw and the cardboard punch. Clothes shops and furniture designers have adopted the word 'jigsaw' as a brand name. I wrote some of this text while wearing a Jigsaw cardigan given to me for Christmas by my son and daughter-in-law. Kiran Desai uses the word as a verb in her novel The Inheritance of Loss (2006), where she speaks of jigsawing 'cups, saucers, teapot, milk, sugar, strainer, Marie and Delite biscuits' on a tea tray. (Is there a suggestion here that jigsaws, like Marie biscuits, are part of a threatened and fading Anglophile world?
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