Staff Pick: Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau - The Millions
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Staff Pick: Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau - The Millions
Queneau’s stochastic method might put you in mind of one of those invariably lame improvisational comedy setups whereby a performer has to switch registers according to an audience’s shouted commands — delivering, say, a funeral eulogy first as infomercial sales patter, then as rap-battle braggadocio, then as bawdy Elizabethan comedy. And the book ... See more
Staff Pick: Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau - The Millions
In the introduction to that (1963) edition, Queneau explains that the idea for the Exercises came to him in the 1930s, after he and his friend Michel Leiris had attended a concert at the Salle Pleyel where Bach's The Art of Fugue had been played. What particularly struck Queneau about this piece was that, although based on a rather slight theme, its variations "proliferated almost to infinity." It would be interesting, he thought, to create a similar work of literature.