My first attempt is a little long on books as it covers the past two weeks (I wanted to start last week and didn’t get to it), but probably short on articles/sites as I’m still working out my workflow for this.

-Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster (Holt, 2007): I’m a big fan of Paul Auster. I’ve read almost all of his novels, some more than once. I hope this latest novel is not a sign of things to come, for it is one of (probably the) worst of Auster’s books. It comes it at a brief page count and has large type, and that is the only reason I managed to finish it (it took me the entirety of my train commute one day, there and back). Pulling in a number of characters from his previous works, Auster makes a Beckettian tale about a old man in a room. That he is the writer of the characters (an Auster stand in?) is obvious and banal. Worse than his novel narrated by a dog (previous holder of the “Worst Auster Novel Ever” award).

-Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Denis Diderot (1796) (Oxford Classics translation by David Coward): I’ve read this book three times now. I love it. Diderot’s novel takes a cue from Tristam Shandy in its endlessly digressive narrative about Jacques, a man-servant who believes in determinism, and his Master as they travel and talk. The metafictional aspects of the narrative are a clear precursor to 20th century postmodern fiction. Plus, it’s a really funny book.

-Candide by Voltaire (1759) (Penguin Classics translation by John Butt): Following up on the Diderot, Candide was a disappointment. The two works share some similarities, in particular their use of philosophical systems (Diderot to explain, Voltaire to satirize), but this one falls into a more conventional (for the times) narrative format: a fairly straightforward succession of adventures. Too much of a theme novel and not enough else.

-Atlas #3 by Dylan Horrocks (Drawn & Quarterly): Sometimes the failure of serializing longer works is that the slow unwinding of a narrative doesn’t always work in small chunks, especially when they are spread out over months or years. I didn’t feel that this issue, with its two stories, really advanced anything. A few series I was reading, I’ve stopped getting to wait for the collections, and I may have to add Atlas to the list.

-Love and Rockets Vol.2 #18 by Los Bros Hernandez (Fantagraphics): A series where I don’t wait for the collections even though I only read half the issue (Jaime’s half). In this issue, Jaime focuses on Ray and Vivian as we see their ongoing relationship and a little more about her life. One of the great parts of these stories is the way Jaime follows the side characters.

-Mome Winter 2007 (Fantagraphics): My last issues of this anthology. It’s great that they are serializing Trondheim’s Desoeuvre, but I’ve read it already. As for the rest of the issue, eh.

-The Pharaohs of Egypt by Ruppert and Mulot (Words Without Borders): A short comic by two European comic artists. This is not only a funny comic it has a great clean line and makes great use of what Neil Cohn would call a polymorphic panel (that is the same entity repeated at different points in an action).

-The Ecstasy of Influence by Jonathan Lethem (Harpers Magazine Feb 2007): An amazing essay by Lethem on plagiarism, appropriation, copyright, and culture. Highly recommended.

-The Nietzsche Family Circus: A randomly selected Family Circus panel accompanied by a randomly selected Nietzsche quote. It is surprisingly easy to create a connection between the words and image.

-Children of Clay by Raymond Queneau (1938) (Sun & Moon Classics translation by Madeline Velguth): Rereading Queneau is always a joy for me. He is one author I never tiring of reading. I could make a long list of the traits that make Queneau so wonderful, but let me restrict myself to a few: humor, wordplay, inventiveness with narrative structure, the mixture of the banal and the sublime, the philosophic and the everyday. Queneau’s novels are often difficult to summarize, and this one is no exception. Mostly it follows the members of a wealthy family and a few hangers-on through the years between the wars. It also incorporates Queneau’s encyclopedia of “literary lunatics”, for which he could not find a publisher. Instead, he wrote this novel to incorporate his work into the text (one of the protagonists writes the encyclopedia). The long excerpts from and about the “literary lunatics” are for me the downside of this long novel.

I gave a form, a rhythm to what I was writing. I fixed for myself rules as strict as those of the sonnet. The characters didn’t appear and disappear by chance, the same way for the places and the different modes of expression [...] I wrote other novels with this idea of rhythm, this intention to make of the novel a kind of poem. You can make characters rhyme in the way words rhyme, you can please yourself with alliterations. (Raymond Queneau, Bâtons chiffres et Lettres, 1964, p.40)

The comings and goings of characters could be constrained in comics by structuring the appearance of characters in panels. For instance, two main characters could be set to appear:

a. every x panels (alternating, every other, etc.)

b. by location (one character only appears in the middle panels, a character appears only at the beginning of the page, etc.)

c. in some order (character 1, character 2, character 3, repeat; character 1, no characters, character 2, character 3)

These could be applied to one character or many characters. The constraints could allow an overlaps so that characters appear in the same panel with each other in different combinations.

In one of her two introductions (1958 and 1981) to this book Barbara Wright notes that Exercises in Style (EiS) is one of Raymond Queneau’s best-selling volumes in France. This comes as a bit of a surprise because it is certainly one of his less traditional books. Neither a novel nor a collection of short stories nor a volume of non-fiction, the book consists of ninety-nine variations of the same banal story:

On a crowded bus a narrator observes a young man with a long neck in a strange hat (it has a cord instead of a ribbon) yell at another man whom he claims is purposefully jostling him whenever anyone gets on or off the bus. The young man then sits down in a vacated seat. Two hours later the same narrator sees that same young man with another friend who is suggesting that the young man have another button put on his overcoat.

It doesn’t sound like it would be a pleasurable time rereading this story ninety-nine times, yet with all his trademark humor, imagination, and ingenuity, Queneau makes it not only bearable but damn funny and a joy to experience. EiS is the kind of book you can read straight through or randomly from chapters. How does he do it?

Queneau has created a textbook of literary variation, not through essay and explication but with examples. Barbara Wright mentions her attempts at classifying and grouping the variations and rightfully notes that it is mostly impossible, but there are some easily grouped ones. A number of variations are created through shifting the narrator’s voice both in attitude (“Speaking Personally”, “Reactionary”, “Abusive”) and diction (“Cockney”, “Noble”). There are various literary and non-literary forms used (“Haiku”, “Official Letter”, “Sonnet”, “Free Verse”) and different kinds of discourse (“Philosophic”, “Mathematical”). He uses Oulipian constraints (“Anagrams”, “Word Games”) and rhetorical figures (“Litotes”, “Antiphrasis”, “Synchysis”), as well as numerous variations harder to classify (“Rainbow”, “Consequences”, “Dream”, “Ignorance”, “Olfactory”). The lists goes on and on, always with surprises for the reader.

Queneau exposes the ways language can go beyond the “normal” “plain” style that we habitually use in our speech and writing, but also shows us the imagination and inventiveness that goes into that everyday language. If you are interested in language and writing, this book will find a home on your shelves.

It is insupportable to me to leave the fixing of the number of chapters in these novels [Witchgrass/Barktree (Le Chiendent), Saint Glinglin, The Last Days] up to chance. Le Chiendent is composed of 91 (7 X 13) sections, 91 being the sum of the 13 first numbers and its “sum” being 1, it is at the same time the number of the death of beings and that of their return to existence, a return that I understood then as the irresolvable perpetuity of misfortune/adversity without hope. In those times, I saw in 13 a beneficial number because it denied happiness; as for 7, I took it, and still take it as the numerical image of myself, since my surname and my 2 first names are each composed of 7 letters and that I was born a 21 (3 X 7). [Queneau was born on the 21st of February] (Raymond Queneau, Bâtons chiffres et Lettres, 1964, p. 29)

“Il m’a été insupportable de laisser au hasard le soin de fixer le nombre des chapitres de ces romans. C’est ainsi que Le Chiendent se compose de 91 (7x 13) sections, 91 étant la somme des treize premiers nombres et sa “somme” étant 1, c’est donc à la fois le nombre de la mort des êtres et celui de leur retour à l’existence, retour que je ne concevais alors que comme la perpétuité irrésoluble du malheur sans espoir. En ce temps-là, je voyais dans 13 un nombre bénéfique parce qu’il niait le bonheur ; quant à 7, je le prenais, et puis le prends encore comme image numérique de moi-même, puisque mon nom et mes deux prénoms se composent chacun de sept lettres et que je suis né un 2l (3×7).”

I gave a form, a rhythm to what I was writing. I fixed for myself rules as strict as those of the sonnet. The characters didn’t appear and disappear by chance, the same way for the places and the different modes of expression [...] I wrote other novels with this idea of rhythm, this intention to make of the novel a kind of poem. You can make characters rhyme in the way words rhyme, you can please yourself with alliterations. (Raymond Queneau, Bâtons chiffres et Lettres, 1964, p.40)

“J’ai donné une forme, un rythme à ce que j’étais en train d’écrire. Je me suis fixé des règles aussi strictes que celles du sonnet. Les personnages n’apparaissent pas et ne disparaissent pas par hasard, de même les lieux et les différents modes d’expression (…) J’ai écrit d’autres romans avec cette idée de rythme, cette intention de faire du roman une sorte de poème. On peut faire rimer des personnages comme on fait rimer des mots, on peut même se contenter d’allitérations. ”

[That last bit points to his tendency to repeat the first letters of name, such as all the "P" names in Pierrot Mon Ami.]

Not sure who actually said this one:

“25 years ago Queneau declared that the novel most resemble an onion, some are happy to remove the outermost peel, while others less numerous, peel it layer by layer. These interior layers constitute a novel or a serial, or a fragment, all equally potential.” (Volontés 11 (Nov 1938)

“Voilà 25 ans, Queneau déclarait que le roman doit ressembler à un bulbe ” dont les uns se contentent d’enlever la pelure superficielle, tandis que d’autres, moins nombreux, l’épluchent pellicule par pellicule. ” in Volontés n°11, nov.1938. “Ces pelures intérieures constituent un roman ou un épisode, ou un fragment, tous également potentiels.”

–

In the comments Matt Madden notes his confusion regarding Queneau’s summing 91 and getting 1 (and also corrects one of my translation mistakes). From my readings of Queneau, I’d imagine that he is adding the two digits in 91, 9 + 1 = 10, which also is then “summed” to equal 1. As for it being the number of death and rebirth, that is a bit of a mystery to me. Though 1 and 0 may be the relevant numbers.

Like they say, you can do anything with the numbers.

Calling an author sui generis is a cliché, but in the case of Raymond Queneau it is nothing but the truth. Pierrot Mon Ami, his eighth novel, is a fine introduction to the particular style of this French polymath.

Pierrot, a young man of twenty-eight, starts out with a new job at the “Palace of Fun” in Uni Park (an amusement park based on Paris’ Luna Park) helping women off a moving obstacle and holding them over a air vent which blows up their skirts for the delight of the “philosophers” who pay to watch the spectacle. He quickly loses the job after an incident involving the boss, his daughter, and bumper cars. From there, across the few days that encompass the majority of the novel, Pierrot works as an assistant to a fakir, delivers animals for a zoo, and passes through a string of events that compromise a sort of mystery-detective story about identity and the past.

It’s hard to sum up the plot of this novel, as what amounts to the plot here is a number of events banal in appearance but more mysterious on closer look. Coincidences pile up and bring events and characters together. Pierrot, no detective he, passes the time playing pinball and trying to think of nothing (“better than not thinking”), maintaining a decidedly cheerful disposition in the face of unemployment and lost love.

There is a hidden mystery to the background events of the novel. Confusions of names and identities proliferate, unhelped by Queneau’s insistence of giving almost every character a name that begins with either a P or an M (the jury’s still out on the meaning of that). The identities of some of the characters are left doubtful. A mysterious Poldavian prince is perhaps the same individual as an animal trainer who himself is known by at least three other names and is a former singer and lover of the mistress of the owner of the Uni Park. The Uni Park goes up in flames and while many suspects present themselves, no one is ever attached to the deed. As Pierrot realizes at the end of the book:

“…he saw clearly how all its [the preceding events] constituent elements could have been combined into an adventure that might have developed into a mystery, later to be solved like a problem in algebra in which there are as many equations as unknowns, and he saw how it had not turned out like that.” (148)

Queneau takes the mystery and turns it around so that we see the back of it, never getting enough information and never finding anyone (except ourselves) interested in the solution. Pierrot walks through a world without conclusions and he does it happily.

Many of the characters muse on the past but find it hard to remember all the same, while others seem to barely remember the present (the love of Pierrot’s life seems unable to remember him without prompting). Forgetting and the vagaries of memory offer constant topics of conversation to all but Pierrot who remembers but seems unconcerned by his past.

Throughout, what really makes the book a joy to read is Queneau’s (and in this case the superb translation work of Barbara Wright) style. He mixes the most colloquial of language, the dialogue and speech habits of the common man, with words that will send the most well-read individual to the dictionary. He plays in a thesaurus of synonyms (Pierrot’s glasses are glasses, cheaters, spectacles, gig-lamps, etc.). Also far from insignificant is the humor: Queneau is very funny. Comedy abounds in the dialogue, narration, and slapstick situations.

Queneau’s work is hard to describe, it just has to be read and enjoyed. Whenever I find myself with reader’s block, unsure of what I want to read next and putting down with disappointment anything I pick up, Queneau is like a palate cleanser for me. His novels help me recall the joy of language and storytelling and the potential for literature to be polymorphous, crossing genres, high and lo, philosophy and comedy.

[This review originally appeared March 16, 2005 on Scott Esposito's Conversational Reading. Now found at The Quarterly Conversation.]

“…it must be noted that the poet is never inspired, if by that one means that inspiration is a function of humor, of temperature, of political circumstances, of subjective chance, or of the subconscious. The poet is never inspired, because he is the master of that which appers to others as inspiration. He does not wait for inspiration to fall out of the heavens on him like roasted ortolans. He knows how to hunt, and lives by the incontestable proverb, “God helps them that help themselves.” He is never inspired because he is unceasingly inspired, because the powers of poetry are always at his disposition, subjected to his will, submissive to his own activity…” (Le Voyage en Grece, 126; Quoted in Benabou, Marcel. “Rule and Constraint.” Trans. Warren Motte in Oulipo: A Primer for Potential Literature. Dalkey Archive, 1998. 43.)

And a similar statement from Queneau in one of his novels, this time with a more specific attack against his former companions the Surrealists:

” “That’s right. take another example: inspiration. They see inspiration as the opposite of artistic technique and they aim to have a constant supply of inspiration by rejecting technique, even the technique that gives meaning to words. So what do we get? Inspiration vanishes: you can hardly use the word inspiration for people who roll strings of metaphors and reel off puns by the yard. They lurk in the dark hoping to unearth the hammers and sickles that will break the chains and sever the links that bind man. But they’ve lost their own freedom. They’ve become slaves to twitches and mechanical reactions and they congratulate themselves on being turned into typewriters; they even set themselves up as an example, which shows what naive demagogues they are. They think the future of the mind lies in their prattle and their stutterings! Quite the opposite, I don’t believe that a true poet is ever ‘inspired’: both the lowest and the highest denominator are beneath him, he’s above technique and inspiration, which come to the same thing as far as he’s concerned, because he’s in full possession of both of them. The really inspired person is never inspired: he’s always inspired: he doesn’t go looking for inspiration and he doesn’t get up in arms about artistic technique.” ” (Odile. Trans. Barbara Wright. Dalkey Archive, 1988. 100-01.)

These statements get to the heart of the Oulipian enterprise as conceived by Queneau (and being one of the two founders that counts for something), as well as the general concept of writing with constraint. The idea that a writer is mystically inspired breaks down. Writing isn’t about waiting for a shining light to expose some great idea, it is process, practice, work. It is demystified. The implication of a constraint forces the writer to work harder, but in a way that is directed. See what difference it makes if you just sit down and try to write anything at all or if you sit down and try to write a haiku or paragraph that doesn’t use any a’s.

Maybe next time “writer’s block” sets in, it’s time to try something new. Instead of waiting for inspiration to strike (who knows when if ever that will happen), find a structure, a constraint, to work with.

Nothing that interesting now, but in the 60′s it was a little more novel (if the story still not very exciting). When I first learned of this, I was already familiar with the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books from childhood, which are basically the same idea translated into novels of adventure for kids. I’ve since wondered about the origin of those books and if they at all can be traced back to Queneau.

It is often considered one of the originary works of hypertext fiction. Julio Cortazar’s novel Hopscotch being another.

This story and an article on the idea of theatre created in the same way (Combinatorial theatre) can be found in Motte’s Oulipo book.

[Edit: According to this page (marvel at the work that went into that!) the Choose Your Own books started in 1979.]

Marcel Benabou offers a variation — head-to-tail or double haiku — in which one attachs the first word(s) of each line to the last word(s) (“Tete-a-queue ou double hai kaï” La litterature potentielle (Gallimard, 1973)).

For other examples see:

Mathews, Harry. “Poetic Redundancy.” Oulipo Compendium (Atlas, 1998).

Latis. “Essais de la méthode du T.S. Queneau dur quelques-uns de ses sonnets.” La litterature potentielle (Gallimard, 1973).

Lescure, Jean. “Complément à la redondance chez phane-armé.” La litterature potentielle (Gallimard, 1973).

My examples of both variations follow…

“Aug 39″

What poetry,
This accomplishment
Put together pain?
Labor,
Lessons and Dante,
Indian psychology;
What spell,
This sensibility?
The pure progression,
The thin summits,
Their Pisgah personality,
The fire fields,
The sleep forest,
The curious thought,
Life away,
And man.
The centuries have art,
The subjects the same.
“For Christ’s sake get into bed,
We live forever.”
“Petals rose,”
We live,
Values fall from shellfire,
Only survives,
Only achievement.
They the headstones,
In battlefields,
“Poor guy, all about.”
Spectacled years,
Give cultural lags.
A little soup,
A half-hour morning,
Some didn’t;
The hurry
Behind museums.
This ascent,
Camped timberline,
Watched the earth,
Watched the war
Spread civilization.
These years of authority.
The crisis,
Ten years of power,
The laws,
The rule of blood,
The abiding brain.
They are murderous,
If they cork
It shoots,
It’s condemned
“Liberty mother
Not order.”
“Not men,
But things.”
“From ability,
Unto needs.”
We hear them,
Cutting glaciers,
Teetering aretes.
The cold mountains
Has rope
And iceaxes,
There are left
Twenty-five, sweetheart,
Back from waiting for me.
“I read the New Republic.
Do you remember the corner,
How a sheeted figure
Ran, remember?
There is the corner,
A parking lot to be,
Only houses are left.
We monoxide.”
It was exile,
Twenty-five years around
In a poison.
She went back,
But imported
Explosion gases.
Dante was it,
So many others,
Pound among them,
Kropotkin hunger,
Berkman hand,
Fanny executioners,
Mahkno calumny,
Trotsky after his fashion.
Remember?
What is this poetry,
This accomplishment
much pain?
Do you in the basement?
What years?
Writers’ weeklies?

-5/6/04 D Badman

(This one is created from Kenneth Rexroth’s “August 22, 1939″ (find it in his Complete Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2003)), taking the beginnings and endings of the lines. It’s long, but for the most part works well as a distillation of the original piece, but is, again, something new.)

“Urn”

Quietness,
and slow time,
express
rhyme,
shape,
both.
Arcady.
Maidens loth
to escape
ecstasy?

Unheard,
play on
endear’d
tone.
Leave
bare
thou kiss.
Grieve
thy bliss.
Be fair!

Shed
adieu.
Unwearied
new
love!
Enjoy’d
young
above
cloy’d
tongue.

Sacrifice?
Priest,
the skies
drest?
Shore
the citadel.
Morn,
evermore
to tell.
Return!

Brede
overwrought
weed,
thought
Pastoral.
Waste
woe.
Say’st
all
to know.

-5/5/04 D Badman

(Based on Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”.)

I took Kenneth Rexroth’s “Red Maple Leaves” (1974) and applied the haikuisation method to it, taking one or two words from the end of each line. I adjusted a verb or two (for grammatical correctness), adjusted punctuation, and combined some lines for ease of reading (all those one word lines can be annoying to look at).

Leaves (2004)

Brilliant streets

are filled.

Light has fallen.

Sunlight-covered lawns.

Young together,

other years

gone by.

Days,

with the years

since.

Come back home,

again.

Pillared porch,

at the window:

the river,

a bridge,

amongst leaves -

the smoky sunset.

-5/5/04 D Badman after K Rexroth