Exercises in Style (1947) – Raymond Queneau
I’m in the midst of reading 1001 Books and I am in 1947 now. Time for a bit on Raymond Queneau. Using The Reading Experience as quality qualifier method explained in my previous post I came up with two interesting posts:
via Native Sensibilities:
“But then we Americans inhabit a culture that seems to find “literary” writing in general (much less the “complex negotiations” of a Perec) to be suspiciously “effete.” That American postmodernists might seem laggardly in their capacity for game-playing and their delight in “incongruity” when compared to a Georges Perec or a Raymond Queneau would no doubt strike certain no-nonsence American readers and critics as outlandish. Too many American writers disdain “psychological realism” or good old-fashioned storytelling as it is. Thus, except through the admirable efforts of publishers like Godine (publishers of Perec) or Dalkey Archive, we probably shouldn’t expect to see books by such unmanly Europeans make much of an incursion on American literary life any time soon.”
via More on Oulipo
” The Oulipo – in full, the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature – was founded in France in 1960 by the French author Raymond Queneau and the mathematical historian François Le Lionnais. “