Raymond Queneau

[Stewart]

Raymond Queneau (February 21, 1903 ? October 25, 1976) was a French poet and novelist and the co-founder of Ouvroir de litt?rature potentielle (Oulipo).

As an author, Queneau came to general attention in France with the publication in 1959 of his novel Zazie dans le m?tro, and again in 1960 with the film adaptation by Louis Malle at the height of the Nouvelle Vague movement. Zazie explores colloquial language as opposed to 'standard' written French; a distinction which is perhaps more marked in French than in some other languages.

RELATED LINKS

• Raymond Queneau on Wikipedia
• Biography of Raymond Queneau
• Raymond Queneau at The Modern Word

[Stewart]

I finished Exercises In Style last night, which was an entertaining, sometimes bewildering, read. If anything, it's improved my vocabulary on linguistic terms, such as Syncope, Antiphrasis, and the triptych of Prosthesis, Epenthesis, and Paragoge. (Give me a day or two and I'll have forgotten them again.)

I thought it best to read this before heading on, shortly, to Dumitru Tsepeneag's Vain Art Of The Fugue, which I suspect may owe something to Queneau, in that it's supposedly a series of repeated events on a bus too. That, and as the translator, Barbara Wright notes in one of her introductions, Queneau got the idea from Bach's The Art Of Fugue.

Where's the next place to go with Queneau? Is it Zazie In The Metro?

[titania7]

Stewart,
You might enjoy the Last Days. Just an idea.....

Nice to see a thread on Queneau, by the way.

~Titania

"The only reason people want to be masters
of the future is to change the past."
~Milan Kundera

[nnyhav]

Where's the next place to go with Queneau? Is it Zazie In The Metro?

Yep. But don't stop there. I've read everything Englished except Exercises in Style (readers can impose constraints too!) and much of the poetry (obscure small press), and not been disappointed. I'd recommend The Blue Flowers especially, but also the early philosophical digressions (Bark-Tree/Witch-Grass, Children of Clay), and The Sunday of Life, and and and ...

[Stewart]

I've read everything Englished except Exercises in Style (readers can impose constraints too!)...

Why would you impose such a constraint?

[nnyhav]

Why would you impose such a constraint?

It seems consistent with Oulipo's concept of writing under constraint not to read the one Queneau work that everybody who has read Queneau has read. It's not that I don't appreciate the idea behind it, much the opposite, in fact. (Like Mel Brooks' The Producers setting records on Broadway: I didn't feel the need to attend, but knowing it was there provided great comfort.) And I have no doubt the execution is masterful if not flawless.

[promtbr]

OK, I'm finally taking the Quenau bait, but not yet hooked up. To put to death my weak fishing metaphor, which Queneau/s to start with? I have an itchy mouse finger on "add to basket" button (never a good sign for the wallet)

[nnyhav]

Zazie in the Metro is a good embarcation point: it's the most popularly read.

But any will do.

[lionel]

Zazie in the Metro is a good embarcation point: it's the most popularly read.

I'd sorta second Zazie. But I'd even go as far as to say watch the wonderful Louis Malle film first. Then you go to the book, but the problem is, as so often, that we're talking colloquial French, et ca fait chier de le voir traduit, t'entends? M?tro, mon cul. What's the English title of Pierrot mon ami? That's not a bad entrance point either.

Putain de bordel de merde, j'en ai ras le bol de ces encul?s. No, that's not my comment, but if it were, how the fuck would you translate it? It ain't easy.

[Mirabell]

I'd sorta second Zazie. But I'd even go as far as to say watch the wonderful Louis Malle film first. Then you go to the book, but the problem is, as so often, that we're talking colloquial French, et ca fait chier de le voir traduit, t'entends? M?tro, mon cul. What's the English title of Pierrot mon ami? That's not a bad entrance point either.

Putain de bordel de merde, j'en ai ras le bol de ces encul?s. No, that's not my comment, but if it were, how the fuck would you translate it? It ain't easy.

welcome back!

[lionel]

welcome back!

Cheers, Mirabell! It's good to be back. Now who can I annoy...

[promtbr]

Cheers, Mirabell! It's good to be back. Now who can I annoy...

Well you started with me *winking smilie* as after your first two sentences of your above Queneau recommendation, I understood nada.zip.zero.____. etc.

[lionel]

Well you started with me *winking smilie* as after your first two sentences of your above Queneau recommendation, I understood nada.zip.zero.____. etc.

Sorry, promtbr, I hadn't intended to annoy anyone in this particular case, but was simply pointing out the problems of translating non-standard foreign words into English. Below, I recycle a comment I made on this in a recent email, in which I mention when I first went to live in France - the beautiful southern town of Albi - for two years:

"When I first went to live in France I had to register my presence with the police (the French love formalities like that), and during the form-filling the officer's phone went. During the conversation he said 'Merde!'. Now, we all know that that means 'Shit!', don't we, but try and imagine an English or American cop saying the same in a similar situation: it wouldn't happen. Nor would the many other words you hear all the time on French daytime radio, which the dictionary fascists call 'swear words'. Quite simply, the French are nowhere near as hung up on 'swear words' as we are, although most translators would dutifully record the 'equivalent' meaning, so if the brief story I mentioned was written in French and then translated, the officer would have said 'Shit!'. But he obviously didn't as he didn't apologize to me and saw nothing wrong with what he said. This is just one instance of a difference in culture between two countries: that was more than 30 years ago, so maybe 'Damn! would be a much better translation, even though it's not literal. I'm sure you see what I'm trying to say, but I can think of many more problems: translation is booby-trapped throughout."

Having said this, I have a copy of the English translation of Zazie, which I bought from a library sale, I believe just for Gilbert Adair's brief Introduction. He calls Wright's translaton "heroic", and I'd agree with that: translating works of an experimental nature can only ever, at best, give an idea of what the original work is like. I loved Adair's own translation of Perec's La Disparition (as A Void), and I read them in tandem, but because of the nature of the constraints caused by the
loss of the "e", these two books are very different indeed. But then, we must always keep in mind, when reading substantial translated works, that when we say we're reading a particular author, we're in fact only reading the translator: read two different translations of the same book, and you're bound to be reading two different books.

And this can be disastrous, as it is with a book I've mentioned more than once on this forum, and which is still in print. Admittedly this is a book from the middle of the last century, but if you want to read a true horror story, read about this hugely important and influential work, which has only been translated once, and which I was fortunate enough to be able to read (about five times, I think) in its original language:

The legacy of Simone de Beauvoir - Google Books.

[pesahson]

I just finished "Zazie in the metro" and really enjoyed it. It was the kind of book I needed right now. Fun, fast-paced, very readable. The depiction of a pub fight was one of the funniest things I've read in a while.

I've read his "Exercises in style" in Polish translation a couple of years ago. I remember really liking it. I'm looking forward to reading it in original, but it's going to take a while before I get that good in French.