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jazzy_dave) wrote2013-11-27 03:59 pm
jazzy_dave) wrote2013-11-27 03:59 pm
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Book 51 - Raymond Queneau "Exercise In Style"
Raymond Queneau "Exercise In Style" (Oneworld Classics)
A man on a crowded Parisian bus watches as a young man with a long neck and a hat trimmed with a cord instead of a ribbon suddenly turns on the passenger next to him, accusing him of deliberately treading on his toes. Then, spotting an empty seat, the young man sits down. Two hours later, our narrator is on another bus and spots the young man from the window. He is talking to a friend who is telling him to have the top button on his overcoat raised.
In Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau takes that simple story and tells it 99 different ways. And that’s it.
Queneau was a founder member of the French Oulipo group, a loose affiliation of writers and mathematicians later joined by, among others, Georges Perec and Italo Calvino. The group sought to stimulate literary creativity by imposing unorthodox constraints and structures.
Queneau had been exploring different approaches to storytelling for years and Exercises in Style predates the formation of the Oulipo group. Many of the exercises are amusing, some are insightful and others are just bizarre.
The result is that one is left thinking that there are so many more ways that even such a simple story could be told.
The effect is many-fold. Never again will I be able to see a description of anything without being aware of just how partial that description must be. It illuminates the reality of multiple perspectives from which everything can be seen.
For the writer, reader, speaker and listener it changes the way you perceive the description of everything. Opening up new opportunities and raising countless new questions.
This is a truly fascinating book, which has become a timeless classic.
A man on a crowded Parisian bus watches as a young man with a long neck and a hat trimmed with a cord instead of a ribbon suddenly turns on the passenger next to him, accusing him of deliberately treading on his toes. Then, spotting an empty seat, the young man sits down. Two hours later, our narrator is on another bus and spots the young man from the window. He is talking to a friend who is telling him to have the top button on his overcoat raised.
In Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau takes that simple story and tells it 99 different ways. And that’s it.
Queneau was a founder member of the French Oulipo group, a loose affiliation of writers and mathematicians later joined by, among others, Georges Perec and Italo Calvino. The group sought to stimulate literary creativity by imposing unorthodox constraints and structures.
Queneau had been exploring different approaches to storytelling for years and Exercises in Style predates the formation of the Oulipo group. Many of the exercises are amusing, some are insightful and others are just bizarre.
The result is that one is left thinking that there are so many more ways that even such a simple story could be told.
The effect is many-fold. Never again will I be able to see a description of anything without being aware of just how partial that description must be. It illuminates the reality of multiple perspectives from which everything can be seen.
For the writer, reader, speaker and listener it changes the way you perceive the description of everything. Opening up new opportunities and raising countless new questions.
This is a truly fascinating book, which has become a timeless classic.