Raymond Queneau

Raymond Queneau was the co-founder of Oulipo, and a poet, novelist, essayist, publisher and encyclopedist. Queneau’s seminal volume, Exercises in Style (1947), went through several editions and he wrote many more than the 99 variations in the published book versions. The two N+7 variations here, ‘Obelisks’ and ‘Opinions’, were written for the Dossier 17 of the Collège de ­’Pataphysique in 1961, where Queneau used for one exercise the Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustré (1952 edition); and for the other a list of the three hundred words of elementary French (published in 1954). Rather than translate Queneau’s texts directly, which would muddle the effects of the constraint, I have translated them from the English. For the Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustré I have substituted the illustrated children’s encyclopedia 10,000 Answers to Children’s Questions (undated); for elementary French I have substituted Charles Kay Ogden’s Basic English (1930). ‘Five, Six, Seven, Eight’ and ‘Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve’ are unpublished drafts from the Queneau archives at the Bibliothèque Armand Salacrou, Le Havre, where I stumbled across them in November 2018. Neither piece has been published previously in French or in English. Reprinted with permission of the Bibliothèque Armand Salacrou, the estate of Raymond Queneau, and Alma Books.

Raymond Queneau's work featured in PN Review comprises two contributions of poetry, over a period of 11 years. Also available are two reviews of Raymond Queneau's work.