J Robert Lennon on Oulipoian Writing Exercises

Very interesting lecture by J Robert Lennon, author most recently of Castle (our review here).

Speaking of Oulipo, I just read Andrew Leak's essay (in the current Review of Contemporary Fiction) on how Barthes' Mythologies unites Perec's novels Things and A Man Asleep. Wonderful essay, basically arguing that each of the books dramatize a different response to myths of bourgeois culture, as deconstructed by Barthes. Way too much in it to summarize here, but here's a good quote:

Perec once used a highly suggestive term to describe the way in which he appropriated the work of other writers: phagocyter ("to phagocyte"). This very properly describes the action of white blood cells in absorbing and destroying pathogenic elements; the French verb is particularly apt due to the pun it makes available (citer = "to quote"). And it would be hard to deny that there is a degree of ambivalence implied in Perec's attitude. When he phago-cites a passage of Flaubert or of Kafka, the "original" is destroyed by being wrenched bodily from its organic context and absorbed into a new one, but it is also acknowledged and resurrected inasmuch as it provides the point of departure for something new. It can now be seen how Perec feels able to take his place in a lineage which includes "all the literature of the past": in "quoting" Barthes and Robbe-Grillet, he is taking as read everything which has already been "read" by these writers–rather like a crocodile who swallows a pig who swallows a rat who swallows . . .

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