It is Germany near the end of World War II, the Allies have landed and members of the Vichy France government have been sequestered in a labyrinthine castle, replete with secret passages and subterranean hideaways. The group of 1,400 terrified officials, their wives, mistresses, flunkies, and Nazi "protectors"--including Celine, his wife, their cat, and an actor friend--attempt to postpone the postwar reckoning under the constant threat of air raids and starvation. With an undercurrent of sensual excitement, Celine paints an almost unbearably vivid picture of human society and the human...
It is Germany near the end of World War II, the Allies have landed and members of the Vichy France government have been sequestered in a labyrinthi...
A remarkable collection of writings by members of the group known as the Oulipo (Ouvroir de litterature potentiale), this anthology includes, among others, Italo Calvino, Harry Mathews, Georges Perec, Jacques Roubaud, and Raymond Queneau. Founded in Paris in 1960, the Oulipo views imaginative writing as an exercise dominated by the method of "constraints." While a major contribution to literary theory, and also great fun, Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature is perhaps most distinguished as an indispensable guide to writers.
A remarkable collection of writings by members of the group known as the Oulipo (Ouvroir de litterature potentiale), this anthology includes, among...
Martereau is narrated by a tubercular young man driven by a compulsion to discover what lies behind faades, especially in relation to the adults around him. He's particularly interested in Martereau, his uncle's devoted friend and business associate. All in all, Martereau seems like a trustworthy, benign, self-sufficient man, but under the narrator's intense scrutiny--and Martereau's suspect behavior concerning a shady real-estate deal--his motives seem much more complex and seedy. In a subtle, skillful way, Nathalie Sarraute explores the difference between those who are wealthy and those...
Martereau is narrated by a tubercular young man driven by a compulsion to discover what lies behind faades, especially in relation to the adults ar...
In the tradition of Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew, and Raymond Queneau's The Flight of Icarus, Robert Pinget's Mahu or The Material tells the story of Mahu, a lazy man who may be a character in his friend Latirail's failing novel, which is taken over by characters invented by Sinture, yet another writer. The latter half of the novel consists of Mahu's strange and hilarious musings on everything from belly dancers to how he catches ideas from other people in the same way he catches germs. Mahu is Pinget's funniest novel, featuring a mix of dark humor...
In the tradition of Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds, Gilbert Sorrentino's Mulligan Stew, and Raymond Queneau's The Flight of Icarus, Robert Pinge...
Composed of 150 poems, with a title taken from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, and partly a response to the poetry of Raymond Queneau, this collection explores Jacques Roubaud's many poetic modes. He skips from the strict form of the sonnet to the freedom of prose poetry without abandoning the melancholy playfulness that has defined his lengthy writing career. A selection of Roubaud's best recent work, The Form of a City describes not only Paris, but also its people, its writers (and those of the Oulipo in particular), its monumental past, and its unsteady response to change.
Composed of 150 poems, with a title taken from Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, and partly a response to the poetry of Raymond Queneau, this co...
At a time when the dialogue between America and France is strained by political and cultural forces, As You Were Saying provides a space for an important and riveting exchange between writers from these two countries. By pairing some of America's best writers with their French contemporaries, As You Were Saying shows us the importance of considering--and responding to--the world beyond our borders. A unique collaboration, the stories collected here were begun by the French writers, and then responded to by their American counterparts. The results are spectacular--funny and inventive, and an...
At a time when the dialogue between America and France is strained by political and cultural forces, As You Were Saying provides a space for an import...
When French mafioso Oscar Lux saved Clovis Baccara from killing himself, he became the boss and something of a mentor to Clovis. Twenty years later, it is no surprise that Clovis is named best man when Oscar decides to settle down and get out of the business. Fulfilling his role as second-hand man, Clovis is entrusted with the job of guarding Oscar s new bride when Oscar is taken into police custody for embezzlement and racketeering on the day after his wedding. Alone on his boss s honeymoon in Los Angeles with Oscar s incredibly attractive new wife, Clovis tries his hardest to adhere to the...
When French mafioso Oscar Lux saved Clovis Baccara from killing himself, he became the boss and something of a mentor to Clovis. Twenty years later, i...
In a mythical African land, some shipwrecked and uniquely talented passengers stage a grand gala to entertain themselves and their captor, the great chieftain Talou. In performance after bizarre performance--starring, among others, a zither-playing worm, a marksman who can peel an egg at fifty yards, a railway car that rolls on calves' lungs, and fabulous machines that paint, weave, and compose music--Raymond Roussel demonstrates why it is that Andr? Breton termed him "the greatest mesmerizer of modern times." But even more remarkable than the mind-bending events Roussel details--as well...
In a mythical African land, some shipwrecked and uniquely talented passengers stage a grand gala to entertain themselves and their captor, the grea...
In some kind of institution, maybe a hospital or rehabilitation center, we are introduced to Wert, a disturbed, traumatized man still suffering the horrors of his experience as a soldier fighting in an unidentified conflict. A patient or prisoner, Wert writes down his memories of the war; his impressions of his current, ill-defined treatment; and his reflections on his own psychological well-being. When at last released, Wert undertakes a long journey to the east, and slowly recognizes the events of his life as being reminiscent of episodes from ancient epic narratives--as though his...
In some kind of institution, maybe a hospital or rehabilitation center, we are introduced to Wert, a disturbed, traumatized man still suffering the...
In this nominally true story of an epic, transcontinental road trip, Jean Rolin travels to Africa from darkest France, accompanying a battered Audi to its new life as a taxi to be operated by the family of a Congolese security guard. The ghost of Joseph Conrad haunts Rolin's journey, as do memories of his expatriate youth in Kinshasa in the early 1960s--but no less present are W. G. Sebald and Marcel Proust, who are the guiding lights for Rolin's sensual and digressive attack upon history: his own as well as the world's. By turns comic, lyrical, gruesome, and humane, "The Explosion of the...
In this nominally true story of an epic, transcontinental road trip, Jean Rolin travels to Africa from darkest France, accompanying a battered Audi...
