The Rachel Shihor Interview
Graphs, Maps, Trees
I think it’s pretty awesome that Michael Dirda reviews Many Subtle Channels in The Washington Post, but this is not so awesome:
People either judge these kinds of authorial limitations as virtuosically clever but aesthetically trivial, or they find them just incredibly cool. The young Daniel Levin Becker, now the reviews editor for the Believer, was so taken with Perec’s work that he traveled to France, helped organize the OuLiPo’s archives, interviewed its members and eventually was himself “co-opted” into the group. (The OuLiPo has 38 members, five of them women and seven non-French.) Levin Becker relates his experiences at the beginning and end of “Many Subtle Channels”; in between he presents a history of the workshop from its foundation to the present. The result is a distinctly intimate and exceptionally entertaining book. . . .
“An Oulipian constructs a poem or a novel the way a mathematician proves a theorem — carefully, methodically, embracing a set of rules.” But this doesn’t mean that the results can’t be mesmerizing (see Calvino’s “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler”), sexy (see Roubaud’s three “Hortense” novels) or even simultaneously philosophical and adventure-packed (see Perec’s masterpiece, “Life: A User’s Manual”). If you enjoy crosswords, intricately structured mysteries a la Agatha Christie, puns, hypertext fiction, shaggy dog stories, Bourbaki mathematics, the games of chess and Go, or simply work that boggles the mind, then you really need to discover the OuLiPo.
Dirda somewhat glances at the fact this Oulipo is just good literature before falling back on the tired “if you like math and games” nonsense. No. Oulipo is for you if you like good literature. Full stop. I don’t do math, and crossword puzzles bore me, and I love about 15 Oulipo books. End of story.
Coming from Dirda, this feel like even more of a betrayal, since he’s usually pretty good at writing about innovative literature in a way that bring readers in, instead of scaring them away.
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I don’t find anything offensive in Dirda’s review, or in his concluding statement. It strikes me as fairly inclusive and representative. Especially given that the last item in his list is the rather more inclusive “work that boggles the mind,” because the Oulipo’s work isn’t focused solely on making “good literature” (if it were, it wouldn’t be necessary to give it a name). Each work is fascinating (or not) to its reader specifically in the discovery of its constraint(s), and in the discovery of what happens when that constraint is applied narrative, language, story, poetry, etc. This kind of rigor does, I would argue, appeal to readers who find the items in his list (and surely more) appealing. Perhaps the closing remark is lighthearted, but so what? To call it a “betrayal” seems a bit extreme.
Well, I found “Life” amusing for awhile but quickly became tired of the typical French navel gazing that passes for literature sometimes. I get that there is no plot per se but what takes its place? Endless lists of detritus in a given room/house, made up biographies etc….. yes,I agree, if you’re into arcana and detail up the wazoo you’ll enjoy “Life”. For me though it got a little too precious, too self absorbed… in other words typically French.
I might agree that it is extreme to call the line a betrayal, but Scott, I hear ya. I hate math and I love the Oulipo writers that I have read. And while the constraints, rules, and methods are always interesting, they would not be enough. The books themselves are what matters, not how they were written. Calvino, Perec, Queneau, Matthews… these are great writers, period. That they used rules as a means of creating their books is fascinating, but the joy of A Void rests less in the omission of the letter E than in the book itself. A lesser writer than Perec could have written a lousy book without the letter E.
And a lesser one did, of course.