Exercises in style (original 1947; edition 1981)

Hmm, well, the title is certainly apt--this really isn't a book that you read because of the plot! What it is, is a story of just a few paragraphs, told over and over again in a whole variety of styles.

I thought the idea sounded really cool, but somehow the actuality of it just didn't grab me. ( )

Pearls before a swine? Perhaps.

It definitely takes a lot of talent for someone to tell one completely unremarkable story 99 times and still make a fun and readable book out of it. What Queneau (and the translator) has done here is really clever work, no doubt. And I can imagine this whole exercise must have been very amusing for him. But that doesn't mean reading it will be just as enjoyable as writing it was.**

These are exercises in writing in English (originally French). I do have some working knowledge of English, but nowhere enough to understand the nuances of the language. I actually had to look up some of the chapter titles in the dictionary, most of which were technical terms related to linguistics and grammar. Being illiterate in literary matters, I may not always be able to appreciate writing proficiency. I read for fun, not for 99 exercises in reading!
People who have a better eye for word play, will probably enjoy this book better.

My rating for this book kept fluctuating throughout. There are some chapters for which I will easily give solid five stars. But then there are others which seem entirely nonsensical and impractical. No one will ever use them for any real writing. Also, writing style needs to be suitable to the content. Some of the styles seem forced. Then there a bunch of chapters which were perhaps added just to bring the number to 99.

- Add/remove a sound to/from beginning/middle/end of each word
- permutations of nth alphabets/words
These already make more than 10 chapters.

Another clever thing Queneau did was to keep the chapters very short. Otherwise I would have skipped many of them after reading only a few sentences to figure out the style.

In case anyone is wondering what the story is, here it is, in Interjections style:
"Psst! h'm! ah! oh! hem! ah! ha! hey! well! oh! pooh! poof! ow! oo! ouch! hey! eh! h'm! pffft!

Well! hey! pooh! oh! h'm! right!"
** Completely unrelated aside :

This reminds me of my visit to MoMA. One of the works of art was '10 million years', basically all the numbers from 1 to 10 million written in 10 fat books. On the artist's part, it must have taken a lot of patience and hard-work. It probably fed some sort of obsession of his. But no matter what it meant to him, to me it was just BLAH! I can be quite a lousy museum-goer. ( )

Le narrateur rencontre, dans un autobus, un jeune homme au long cou, coiffe d'un chapeau orné d'une tresse au lieu de ruban. Le jeune homme échange quelques mots assez vifs avec un autre voyageur, puis va s'asseoir à une place devenue libre. Un peu plus tard, le narrateur rencontre le même jeune homme en grande conversation avec un ami qui lui conseille de faire remonter le bouton supérieur de son pardessus. Cette brève histoire est racontée quatre-vingt-dix-neuf fois, de quatre-vingt-dix-neuf manières différentes.

Two men stand next to each other on a crowded Paris bus. The younger one has a long neck and a hat with a cord around the crown instead of a ribbon. He accuses the other of deliberately stepping on his toes, but the altercation goes no further as he grabs an empty seat. Two hours later we see the same young man with a friend who tells him that the top button of his overcoat should be placed higher.

This simple and meaningless story is told a total of 99 times in the manner of a baroque theme and variations. Each telling follows a theme either in its form, perspective, or use of language. There is, for example, the telegraph message. There is one in Cockney slang. There is one as the libretto of an opera. There is one using botanical images and metaphors. There are variations with letters and words transposed. My favorite, titled "Hellenisms," uses manufactured words with Greek roots: "In a hyperomnibus full of petrolonauts in a chronia of metarush I was a martyr to this microrama..."

Exercises in Style is a marvelous and entertaining display of the flexibility of language and the way that it becomes part of the story. ( )

A simple story told 99 ways--what a hoot! Although it was originally published over 50 years ago, there's a "You Know" version that sounds like perfect Valley speak today. Some of the versions need to be read aloud for full effect (they are in slang and dialect), and some are virtually unintelligible. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise. ( )