The first English translation of essays from one of the twentieth century's most intriguing avant-garde writers
Compiled from two volumes of Raymond Queneau's essays ("Batons, chiffres et lettres" and "Le Voyage en Grece"), these selections find Queneau at his most playful and at his most serious, eloquently pleading for a certain classicism even as he reveals the roots of his own wildly original oeuvre. Ranging from the funny to the furious, they follow Queneau from modernism to postmodernism by way of countless fascinating detours, including his thoughts on language, literary fashions,...
The first English translation of essays from one of the twentieth century's most intriguing avant-garde writers
Stories and Remarks collects the best of Raymond Queneau's shorter prose. The works span his career and include short stories, an uncompleted novel, melancholic and absurd essays, occasionally baffling "Texticles," a pastiche of Alice in Wonderland, and his only play. Talking dogs, boozing horses, and suicides come head to head with ruminations on the effects of aerodynamics on addition, rhetorical dreams, and a pioneering example of permutational fiction influenced by computer language. Also included is Michel Leiris's preface from the French edition, an introduction by the translator, and...
Stories and Remarks collects the best of Raymond Queneau's shorter prose. The works span his career and include short stories, an uncompleted novel, m...
Called by some the French Borges, by others the creator of le nouveau roman a generation ahead of its time, Raymond Queneau's work in fiction continues to defy strict categorization. The Flight of Icarus (Le Vol d'lcare) is his only novel written in the form of a play: seventy-four short scenes, complete with stage directions. Consciously parodying Pirandello and Robbe-Grillet, it begins with a novelist's discovery that his principal character, Icarus by name, has vanished. This, in turn, sets off a rash of other such disappearances. Before long, a number of desperate authors are found in...
Called by some the French Borges, by others the creator of le nouveau roman a generation ahead of its time, Raymond Queneau's work in fiction continue...
The Sunday of Life, the late Raymond Queneau's tenth novel, was first published in French by Gallimard in 1951 and is now appearing for the first time in this country. In the ingenuous ex-Private Valentin Bru, the central figure in The Sunday of Life, Queneau has created that oddity in modern fiction, the Hegelian naif. Highly self-conscious yet reasonably satisfied with his lot, imbued with the good humor inherent in the naturally wise, Valentin meets the painful nonsense of life's adventures with a slightly bewildered detachment.
The Sunday of Life, the late Raymond Queneau's tenth novel, was first published in French by Gallimard in 1951 and is now appearing for the first time...
