Raymond Queneau (1903–1976)

One very effective way I have found to squeeze the juice of wisdom from the books I read is to write a review, which forces me to formulate my ideas and opinions in precise and clear (at least that is my intent) language. However, with Raymond Queneau's Exercises in Style, we have a book that contains not only wisdom but many flavors of linguistic magic. Thus, I need to do more than simply write a review. I found the solution: I read Barbara Wright's translation aloud, recording my voice on show more a digital recorder, and then listen whilst taking my walks.

Each of the 99 variations of this short tale of a young man with his long neck and felt hat is worth reading and listening to multiple times; matter of fact, it would be an aesthetic injustice to read through this novel once or twice and put it down, thinking you finished the book and did the author justice. No, no, no - that would be anti-Queneau!

Should I attempt to be linguistically clever, verbally crafty, syntactically cunning, offering astute wordplay, adroit repartee or ingenious punning? I should not and I will not. I will simply say how Queneau's novel is a one-of-a-kind adventure into language and the ways language can be used to tell a story. And, oh, lest I forget - the chapter heading are complete with fanciful, cartoonish illustrations of humans posing as the beginning letters of words, making the entire work that much more charming and piquant. Thank you Stefan Themerson for your artwork and thank you New Directions for your publishing creativity.

Barbara Wright does the English translation. And what a translation! A work of art in its own right (no pun intended). Barbara Wright's first career was that of a pianist and she found translating and playing piano have a great deal in common. She noted how both require an ability to, as she says in her own words, "present artistic works to an audience in a manner acceptable and satisfying to the composer or writer and honest in their interpretation."

As by way of example, here is the first line of the chapter entitled `Parechesis'. We read, "On the butt-end of a bulging bus which was transbustling an abundance of incubuses and Buchmanites from bumbledom towards their bungalows, a bumptious buckeen whose buttocks were remote from his bust and who was buttired in a boody ridiculous busby, buddenly had a bust-up with a robust buckra who was bumping into him: "Buccaneer, buzz off, you're butting my bunions!" Now such a beautiful boutique of buzzes baffles the brain . . . - well, you get the idea; I will stop there so as not to get carried away and bore.

Now that I put the finishing touches on my review, I bid you ado as I am off to the park, digital recorder in hand, poised to listen to Exercises In Style, and by so listening to float up into an ocean of linguistic light and aesthetic bliss. Tally-ho with Raymond Queneau. show less

This might not be easy. Queneau of course one of the founders of Oulipo (other members include Georges Perec: Italo Calvino) who Perec dedicated 'Life: A user's manual' to.

One of the things I liked best about this hilarious novel was the insertion of (and excerpts taken from) all the 19th century French 'literary lunatics'. As it happens these people really existed and to be included in the text of this novel they had to meet some very stringent criteria. It also posed a hell of a challenge show more for the translator who had to dig around in some very dusty archives at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. This is all so just one of the characters a professor and would be author himself can write a book--a kind of compendium about these literary madmen and their deranged ideas. So the translator not only had the job of translating Queneau's work but also to find and translate all these others intent on squaring circles and reaching the stars or even the sun. Anyway that is one thread that goes back and forth between 3 sets of people who occasionally interconnect with each other. As bizarre as this might seem it is written in Queneau's light and satiric style and in a very engaging manner and he's able to seamlessly fit these threads together when those occasions arise. Originally published before World War II this book also gives us a fairly rounded portrait of French society leading into that conflict for instance in the fascistic political opportunism of one set of those characters. It even throws in a blackmailing demon who comes to a very surprising end. And finally last but not least Queneau himself will step onstage.

Without a doubt my favorite novel of his--a very entertaining work. show less

This was an unfinished and undated manuscript, never published during Queneau's lifetime: a complicated crime story obviously inspired by the famous Fantômas series (1911-1963), but with bizarre elements that are straight out of Queneau's surreal imagination, like the seventeen giant octopuses, one of which descends from the top of the Eiffel Tower to squash a traffic policeman, or the man in an orangutang suit in a carnival parade who turns out to be an actual orangutang. Or the car chase show more in which the chasing car and its occupants turn out to be identical to those being chased. All very strange, and of course it's impossible to know which of the many inconsistencies in the plot are deliberate and which are due to the unfinished state of the story. But fun, in a bizarre way. show less

Some books are clever in theory but dull in execution, whether due to the abstruseness of the underlying ideas or some incapacity of the writer. Exercises In Style is not one of those; even in translation (performed ably by Barbara Wright), it's obvious that this is one of those books that came out just as the author intended. While the underlying conceit may seem a bit lame, the underlying product is quite funny and enjoyable.

The central conceit is that Queneau takes a boring, everyday show more scene - the unnamed narrator watches two other men jostle for space on a bus, and then later sees one of them again being given fashion advice - and describes it in 99 different ways. Each form can be something as simple as changing the verb tenses to set the scene in the past, more complex such as various poetic styles, or just funny as in Cockney accents or pig Latin. Each different style emphasizes either a different facet of the encounter or a different way of perceiving the action, bringing to mind McLuhan's famous "the medium is the message" dictum. Sometimes the particular style will be almost unintelligible (I'm thinking of ones like the arrangements of permutations of certain numbers of letters), but since every detail of the scene becomes intimately familiar very quickly, the nuances of each particular descriptive technique take center stage. This is a book truly immune to spoilers, but enriched by repetition.

In terms of novelty, it reminds me of Pynchon's later "You never did the Kenosha Kid" scene in Gravity's Rainbow, though apparently it actually has more in common with chapter 33 of Erasmus' De Copia, where Erasmus comes up with 195 different ways to write the sentence "Your letter pleased me greatly" as part of a demonstration of technique. Regardless of provenance or influence or originality, my main takeaway is that this is a really creative way to emphasize the arbitrariness of presentation - there are an almost infinite number of ways to tell a story, and Queneau is showing so many to demonstrate that true artistry lies in selecting the right one (perhaps Flaubert's line about "le mot juste" should be amended to "le style juste" in this case). Most of these styles are obviously unsuitable for a "normal" novel, yet the concept of an entire novel being told in the form of a cross-examination, for example, seems like it could stimulate the right sort of author looking for inspiration.

There is no "point" to the book - I'm not sure I'd call it a novel - beyond its display of rhetorical technique, but even this formal exercise is engaging over its course, and even if some of the styles don't quite translate (Wright quite reasonably chooses analogous English modes in some instances, which of course provokes further thoughts on the question of limits of style beyond language), the book shows that a clever writer can make even the simplest idea and the simplest story entertaining. show less