New Exercises in Style

My review of the new edition of Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style ran at The Washington Post over the weekend.

“Exercises in Style” was a revolution, a book that proclaimed its powerful ideas simply by pursuing their iron logic. An inveterate experimenter who was particularly attracted to rendering spoken French on the page, Queneau shows here how the act of writing draws our thoughts into prescribed channels, conditioning how we construct narratives for ourselves and, ultimately, what we think about the world around us. In “Free verse,” for instance, poetry’s preference for concision and suggestion makes the story into an elusive, melancholy ode. It begins, “the bus / full / the heart / empty / the neck / long,” before concluding “of that heart, of that neck, of that ribbon, of those feet, / of that vacant place, / and of that button.” By contrast, “Cross-examination” sticks to observable facts and openly retreats from any statements about intangibles such as feelings or aspirations.

And since Queneau was the beginning of Oulipo, here’s a link to The End of Oulipo?

You Might Also Like:

More from Conversational Reading:

1. More Exercises in Style For the 65th anniversary of Exercises in Style, New Directions is doing a new edition, with 25 newly translated exercises from Queneau, plus tribute exercises...
2. 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...
3. Friday Column: Style Over Substance In this post, Dan Green takes critic Laura Miller to task for her critique of "beautifully written books that have nothing to say." This critique...
4. Style I agree with Dan, who says Diana at Seeking Clarity tells us that : Even though I was a French Literature major, my views on...
5. Style vs. Consciousness Dan Green has stirred up a lot of discussion with his response ot Zadie Smith’s essay in The Guardian. This seems to be the crux...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.