Chekhov’s Mistess

July 21, 2004

If Bach were a Novelist

 

A funny thing happened on the way to the first chapter of Lolita. The deeply interesting introduction by Alfred Appel includes a reference to the French writer Raymond Queneau, a founding member of the literary movement Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature).

The Oulipo entry in the Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory explains that the group was formed in 1960, initially with the idea of incorporating mathematical structures in literature and later with developing “self-imposed restrictive systems.” Generally though, “Oulipian writers specialize in playful language games to generate their works, [such as] novels which lack a certain letter of the alphabet (the lipogram).”

According to Roger Shattuck, author of The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts, Queneau had an encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy, mathematics, languages, and world literature, utilizing them all in editing the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, which he describes as the “most comprehensive account of world literature available in any language.”

As an introduction to the man and the movement, I bought Queneau’s Exercises in Style. Aptly titled, Exercises begins with a 139 letter (in the English translation) story, simply, the story of young man on a bus who becomes annoyed with another passenger and rushes to an open seat; later the man is seen in another location, where a friend is advising him about a button on his lapel. The banality of the story is intentional, as Queneau then tells the story in 99 other iterations. Each is entertaining and explorative of the stylistic possibilities available to a writer.

For example, the story above is told using Spoonerisms (the transposition of the first sounds or other consonants of two words):

“One May about didday, on the bear fatborm of a plus, I maw a san with a nery vong neck…”

Or another, just to show that this isn’t all fun and games, a Hesitation version:

“I don’t know where it happened…in a church, a dustbin, a charnel-house? A bus perhaps? There were…but what were there, though? Eggs, carpets, radishes? Skeletons? Yes, but with their flesh still around them, and alive. But one (or two?) of them was making himself conspicuous, I don’t really know in what way. For his megalomania? For his adiposity? For his melancholoy? Rather…more precisely…for his youth, which was embellished by a long…nose?…”

That’s the idea. Other styles include, the Sonnet, Olfactory, Biased, Permutations by Groups of 2, 3, 4 and 5 letters, Opera English, For Ze Frrensh, and so on, all poking fun at language and making a point of stretching the limits of what can be done with words.

Queneau came up with the idea after seeing a performance of Bach’s The Art of the Fugue in the 1930’s. Bach wrote his fugues as purely theoretical models for the composition of counterpoint – the interweaving of melodies. They were not necessarily meant to be performed but have become popular because of their beauty.

These Fugues, of which there are 20, each have four voices (instruments) and starting with a simple melody as a subject, off they go, like a fascinating conversation, twisting and turning the same notes in order to explore all their potential variations. Interestingly, Bach never finished his final fugue before he died and it enigmatically uses as it’s subject the four notes Bb-A-C-B-natural (B-A-C-H). The fugue is a standard musical form, but Bach’s Art of the Fugue displayed his spectacular genius and influenced many composers including Mozart and Brahms.

Queneau did with words essentially what Bach did with notes, although perhaps intending more entertainment than theory. I think the book is essential for writers if for no other reason than to appreciate all that can be done with an otherwise simple story. However, when I mentioned the book to a couple of non-writing friends, they too were fascinated by the premise.

Shattuck says that Queneau finds his place, along with Carroll and Kafka, in the realm of farce and philosophy. You will only get one of these with Exercises in Style, but as an introduction, as it was for me, it’s a terrific start and I look forward to moving on to Zazie, and We Always Treat Women Too Well

For more information, see:

MadInkBeard, a blog bravely dedicated to the Oulipo movement.

“Farce & Philosophy” by Roger Shattuck. New York Review of Books, February 22, 2001. (subscription or pay-per-article only).

Items Mentioned in this Post:


Amazon.com: Books: The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (Reference Books)” href=“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140513639/qid=1090440422/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-2229159-9088749?v=glance&s=books”>The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (Reference Books)



Amazon.com: Books: Roger Shattuck: The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts” href=“http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0878466541/ref=wl_it_dp/104-2229159-9088749?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=I1NHQ1SRFSMSHI&v=glance&colid=3NLJ00FFCHW1B”>Roger Shattuck: The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts

• posted by Bud Parr
• share this »

---

Comments

Discuss this post.

Page 1 of 1 pages of comments

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

---