Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Alma Books (2012), Edition: Special edition, 224 pages
Description
On a crowded bus at midday, the narrator observes one man accusing another of jostling him deliberately. When a seat is vacated, the first man takes it. Later, in another part of town, the man is spotted again, while being advised by a friend to have another button sewn onto his overcoat. Exercises in Style retells this apparently unremarkable tale ninety-nine times, employing a variety of styles, ranging from sonnet to cockney to mathematical formula. Too funny to be merely a pedantic thesis, this virtuoso set of themes and variations is a linguistic rustremover, a guide to literary forms and a demonstration of imagery and inventiveness.
User reviews
LibraryThing member lucybrown
Queneau sets for himself the challenge of writing the same story, and it is a very slight story indeed, using several different styles and techniques. This edition also includes the efforts of current writers who have taken up the challenge. The story is something like this, a rather pathetic and
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petulant specimen of man with an overlong neck and a hat with an eccentric band quarrels with another passenger on an overcrowded bus Our hero, as it were, accuses the other gentleman of jostling him, on purpose, no less. Our star then throws himself upon the first available seat. Later in the day the narrator sees the petulant fellow being advised as to the placement of the button of his coat. Queneau's tour de force is to tell this same mundane story multiple ways. Some of his renditions are laugh until you cry funny, others, a bit forced. I would not recommend reading them all at once because the exercise then seems tedious. One or two as a treat after dinner is more the way to go. Each rendition is accompanied by a quirky Thurberesque drawing. These are also assured to bring a few giggles. While Exercises in Style is often considered the author's masterpiece, I still reserve that designation for The Sunday of Life. Show Less
LibraryThing member wademlee
A great short work that I've recommended to several budding writers, encouraging them to play with language, find a voice, and challenge themselves to say the same things differently. As is the case with many works from members of OuLiPo, often the self-imposed constraints cause one to reach
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farther and produce a better work of literature than simple writing and re-writing. A fun piece of work for writers OR readers. Show Less
LibraryThing member brakketh
Playful and fun repeated presentation of the same scene, some of the odder styles didn't really click for me but an impressive and enjoyable read.
LibraryThing member ablueidol
First brought this 25 years ago, but in moving around it went walkabout. But the images stayed with me so was glad to finely track down a recent edition.
LibraryThing member jabberwockiness
If you want snapshots of different styles of writing, this is one of the best books for it. The banal story of a man on a bus is retold multiple times, each time in the exaggeration of a certain style, from litotes to colors. Be warned, however - this is not a literal translation. Some of the
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styles in the original French do not translate well or do not exist in English, and so the translator wrote a few of her own to replace those. Nevertheless, the English version proves its point. At times technical but always humorous, it is amazing to observe how the same story can be retold in so many different ways, until its scarcely recognizable. Show Less
LibraryThing member Steve55
This is a fascinating, and as far as I know, unique book. It presents a very simple story, an encounter on a crowded tube train with a brief meeting later the same afternoon. Nothing special in that you may think. What is unique about this book is not the story, but the way in which it is
Now we may at first wonder that there are nine, let alone 99 different ways of describing such a simple tale. The magic of the book is the multiplicity of styles Queneau uses. We might imagine the story told from the different perspectives of the participants. But imagine it observed passively, or described by someone hesitatingly, or with extreme precision. Imagine it told through a sonnet, or a play, or in a tactile way, as the notes in a policeman’s notebook, or focussing on sounds, through spoonerisms, or by a mathematician.
The result is that one is left thinking that there are so many more ways that even such a simple story could be told.
The effect is many-fold. Never again will I be able to see a description of anything without being aware of just how partial that description must be. It illuminates the reality of multiple perspectives from which everything can be seen.
For the writer, reader, speaker and listener it changes the way you perceive the description of everything. Opening up new opportunities and raising countless new questions.
This is a truly fascinating book, which has become a timeless classic.
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presented, or ways in which it is presented to be more accurate, for the same story is presented 99 times.Now we may at first wonder that there are nine, let alone 99 different ways of describing such a simple tale. The magic of the book is the multiplicity of styles Queneau uses. We might imagine the story told from the different perspectives of the participants. But imagine it observed passively, or described by someone hesitatingly, or with extreme precision. Imagine it told through a sonnet, or a play, or in a tactile way, as the notes in a policeman’s notebook, or focussing on sounds, through spoonerisms, or by a mathematician.
The result is that one is left thinking that there are so many more ways that even such a simple story could be told.
The effect is many-fold. Never again will I be able to see a description of anything without being aware of just how partial that description must be. It illuminates the reality of multiple perspectives from which everything can be seen.
For the writer, reader, speaker and listener it changes the way you perceive the description of everything. Opening up new opportunities and raising countless new questions.
This is a truly fascinating book, which has become a timeless classic.
Show Less
LibraryThing member alandavey
Crazy and wonderful.
Fou et merveilleux!
Fou et merveilleux!
LibraryThing member blackhornet
This book should be the dullest thing ever. A simple recount of a fairly mundane event (or two events, I suppose) retold 99 different ways; instead it's a fascinating, highly entertaining demonstration of the multiple possibilities of narrative. The first 20 versions or so race along and Queneau's
If you like this kind of thing you must also read Matt Madden's 'Exercises in Style' a cartoon version of Queneau's narrative game that makes for even better reading.
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playful inventiveness provides plenty of laughs along the way. I'll admit to skimming most of the remainder and not even beginning to understand the concepts behind several, but that's not to diminish the brilliance of the whole. If you like this kind of thing you must also read Matt Madden's 'Exercises in Style' a cartoon version of Queneau's narrative game that makes for even better reading.
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LibraryThing member Prop2gether
A simple story told 99 ways--what a hoot! Although it was originally published over 50 years ago, there's a "You Know" version that sounds like perfect Valley speak today. Some of the versions need to be read aloud for full effect (they are in slang and dialect), and some are virtually
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unintelligible. I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise. Show Less
LibraryThing member JenneB
Hmm, well, the title is certainly apt--this really isn't a book that you read because of the plot! What it is, is a story of just a few paragraphs, told over and over again in a whole variety of styles.
I thought the idea sounded really cool, but somehow the actuality of it just didn't grab me.
I thought the idea sounded really cool, but somehow the actuality of it just didn't grab me.
LibraryThing member Kristelh
This book really is not a novel in my opinion but it is included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. It is what it says in the title, a couple of paragraphs about an encounter on a crowded bus by the narrator is told repeatedly 99 times in different styles.
I guess that this would be a good
The book has linguistic knowledge, ingenuity and humor. It could be interesting to a person studying writing and it certainly gave good examples of things like onomatopeoeia, past, present, passive and even mathematical.
Raymond Queneau is a poet, scholar and mathematician. He is also a linguist and study of language.
The initials for each of the Exercises were done by Stefan Themerson and are unique enough that I think he deserved recognition. They are naken figures doing callestenics in the shape of the first letter of the word.
A quick read for 2 pts in the 1001 Challenge for 2014. Thank you Kyle.
I guess that this would be a good
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translation. Barbara Wright won recognition as on the list of the 50 Outstanding Translations of the Last 50 years. The narrator has done a good job in translating this work and described it as great fun. The book has linguistic knowledge, ingenuity and humor. It could be interesting to a person studying writing and it certainly gave good examples of things like onomatopeoeia, past, present, passive and even mathematical.
Raymond Queneau is a poet, scholar and mathematician. He is also a linguist and study of language.
The initials for each of the Exercises were done by Stefan Themerson and are unique enough that I think he deserved recognition. They are naken figures doing callestenics in the shape of the first letter of the word.
A quick read for 2 pts in the 1001 Challenge for 2014. Thank you Kyle.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JimElkins
I returned to Queneau’s Exercises in Style to help me think a little more about the contemporary “conceptual poetry” and unoriginality movement associated with Craig Dworkin, Marjorie Perloff, Kenny Goldsmith, and others. These remarks start with the contemporary movement, and then I turn to
1. The current state of constrained writing
The current movement explores unoriginality as a theme, and it is itself historically unoriginal. Its interest in writing constrained by rules develops themes initiated by the surrealists and Oulipo. Its interest in unoriginality (in not creating new work, but quoting existing texts) develops ideas that Marjorie Perloff has associated with Walter Benjamin. Its interest in eschewing expression continues themes of modernism first started by Duchamp and dada.
(An historical parenthesis: the current movement’s historical unoriginality is acknowledged in Dworkin’s own history, which presents conceptual poetry as a belated development inspired by 1960s conceptualism in the visual arts. I don’t find Dworkin’s genealogy convincing, but that is another subject. The literature on current writing cold benefit by engaging the literature on postmodernism in music. Richard Taruskin’s account of postwar “classical” music is especially good for its description of Boulez’s attempt to avoid expression in the late 1940s. Music has gone through many of the same fascinations and denials as conceptual poetry, but several decades earlier even than the conceptual art Dworkin cites. Another source that isn’t cited in the conceptual poetry literature is Stanley Cavell’s “Music Discomposed,” written in 1960 as a response to Krenek’s Sestina: Cavell is good on the radical mistrust of expression, which recurs today.)
However conceptual poetry performs these three themes—constrained writing, found poetry, absence of expression—in an especially self-aware, systematic fashion, and that is in itself a kind of originality. It is, in that sense, a typical belated avant-garde, as theorized by Peter Bürger and Hal Foster, with the attendant lack of critical purchase and complicity with the conditions of production.
It has been widely said that Goldsmith’s books are more conceptual than readable. (A minority of readers have also insisted that Goldsmith’s books are compulsively readable precisely because they seem unreadable: but that shows a desire to find expression precisely where expression has been excluded—another theme well articulated in the late 1940s in music, especially in the Darmstadt school.)
What can make it interesting to read a rule-bound project? One reason we read is to see the effect of the rules: whether they are legible, or can be discovered; how they distort whatever writing they are imposed upon; how they produce unexpected kinds of expression even in works done in the belief that they were systematically excluding expression. Another reason it can be interesting to read a constrained writing project is to discover exceptions, flaws, lapses, and liberties: we read for diversions from the rule.
2. Queneau
In Exercises in Style there are a dozen or more kinds of deviations from the author’s own constraints, and those deviations are repeated so that they become themes in their own right. They are, for me, the source of interest in Exercises in Style, and the reason why Queneau is so much more engaging as a writer than Goldsmith or other contemporary writers. Here are a few forms of deviation in Exercises in Style. (These remarks are based on the English translation, which departs from the original in unusual ways: but those departures aren’t pertinent here.)
(a) The logic of individual entries sometimes fails. “Animism,” in which the story is told from the point of view of a hat, runs into trouble when “he (the hat) suddenly went and sat down.” (“He” didn’t; the man under him (the hat) sat down.) The end of that entry falls apart into ellipses: “…an extra button… on his overcoat… to tell him that… him… (the hat).”)
(b) Some entries add more to the story. “Official Letter” is the first to do this: it adds two paragraphs, which feel like the start of a short story.
(c) Some entries fail to do what they promise. “Logical analysis” is just a series of brief statement, which must have reminded queneau of syllogisms: “Me. / Me. / Me. That’s the third character, narrator. / Words. / Words. / Words. That’s what was said.”
(d) Some entries contradict others, building up a Rashomon-style conflict. “Insistence” tells us that the bus was full “because it was 12 noon”; “Official Letter” says the bus was overloaded because the driver “had accepted an overload of several candidates.” (pp. 54, 63).
(e) Some entries permit themselves brief additions at the end, and others don’t. “Ignorance” adds a surprising sentence at the end: “For instance, I remember my father was always telling me about…”
(f) The “Unexpected” last sentence in the last entry is therefore not a surprise: its form is the same as the brief additions in several other entries.
(g) Some entries require and display skill; others do neither. “Noble” is exceptionally skilfull, for example. “Free Verse” includes a nod to Lautréamont.
(h) Some entries do several things at once: they could have been split. “Cross-examination” also has some odd verbal play that has nothing to do with cross-examining. (“it proved to be that of a slightly hypotonic paranoiac cyclothymic…”)
(i) Some entries use the key concept, or title, as an excuse to invent something entirely different. “Spectral” is an entirely new project.
(j) There are three basic kinds of entries: (i) Metaphors, deliberately overdone, like “Gastronomical,” “Botanical,” “Medical.” (ii) Genres of writing, such as “Noble” and “Cross-examination,” and the ode and the operetta. (iii) Classical rhetorical categories, abused. Why aren’t these the only kinds of entries? Why aren’t they ordered? How did he decide on them? These are all sources of divergence from order.
(k) Some entries are based on classical rhetorical categories, but they abuse those categories. “Metathesis,” “Antiphrasis,” “Paragoge,” “Epenthesis,” and others apply the rhetorical tropes, intended for lines of poetry, to individual words. Why, then, does Queneau not similarly abuse his examples of genres of writing, or metaphors?
This is, of course, an open-ended list. But it is not an infinite list, and that’s why it’s a source of interest in reading the book. “Flaws” like these—actually deliberate diversions, which the author permitted himself—are why books like Exercises in Style are engaging, and why contemporary conceptual rule-bound writing often isn’t. (And to return one last time to music and Boulez: this was all done, seventy years ago!, in music, by Boulez and others in his generation.)
Show More
Queneau.1. The current state of constrained writing
The current movement explores unoriginality as a theme, and it is itself historically unoriginal. Its interest in writing constrained by rules develops themes initiated by the surrealists and Oulipo. Its interest in unoriginality (in not creating new work, but quoting existing texts) develops ideas that Marjorie Perloff has associated with Walter Benjamin. Its interest in eschewing expression continues themes of modernism first started by Duchamp and dada.
(An historical parenthesis: the current movement’s historical unoriginality is acknowledged in Dworkin’s own history, which presents conceptual poetry as a belated development inspired by 1960s conceptualism in the visual arts. I don’t find Dworkin’s genealogy convincing, but that is another subject. The literature on current writing cold benefit by engaging the literature on postmodernism in music. Richard Taruskin’s account of postwar “classical” music is especially good for its description of Boulez’s attempt to avoid expression in the late 1940s. Music has gone through many of the same fascinations and denials as conceptual poetry, but several decades earlier even than the conceptual art Dworkin cites. Another source that isn’t cited in the conceptual poetry literature is Stanley Cavell’s “Music Discomposed,” written in 1960 as a response to Krenek’s Sestina: Cavell is good on the radical mistrust of expression, which recurs today.)
However conceptual poetry performs these three themes—constrained writing, found poetry, absence of expression—in an especially self-aware, systematic fashion, and that is in itself a kind of originality. It is, in that sense, a typical belated avant-garde, as theorized by Peter Bürger and Hal Foster, with the attendant lack of critical purchase and complicity with the conditions of production.
It has been widely said that Goldsmith’s books are more conceptual than readable. (A minority of readers have also insisted that Goldsmith’s books are compulsively readable precisely because they seem unreadable: but that shows a desire to find expression precisely where expression has been excluded—another theme well articulated in the late 1940s in music, especially in the Darmstadt school.)
What can make it interesting to read a rule-bound project? One reason we read is to see the effect of the rules: whether they are legible, or can be discovered; how they distort whatever writing they are imposed upon; how they produce unexpected kinds of expression even in works done in the belief that they were systematically excluding expression. Another reason it can be interesting to read a constrained writing project is to discover exceptions, flaws, lapses, and liberties: we read for diversions from the rule.
2. Queneau
In Exercises in Style there are a dozen or more kinds of deviations from the author’s own constraints, and those deviations are repeated so that they become themes in their own right. They are, for me, the source of interest in Exercises in Style, and the reason why Queneau is so much more engaging as a writer than Goldsmith or other contemporary writers. Here are a few forms of deviation in Exercises in Style. (These remarks are based on the English translation, which departs from the original in unusual ways: but those departures aren’t pertinent here.)
(a) The logic of individual entries sometimes fails. “Animism,” in which the story is told from the point of view of a hat, runs into trouble when “he (the hat) suddenly went and sat down.” (“He” didn’t; the man under him (the hat) sat down.) The end of that entry falls apart into ellipses: “…an extra button… on his overcoat… to tell him that… him… (the hat).”)
(b) Some entries add more to the story. “Official Letter” is the first to do this: it adds two paragraphs, which feel like the start of a short story.
(c) Some entries fail to do what they promise. “Logical analysis” is just a series of brief statement, which must have reminded queneau of syllogisms: “Me. / Me. / Me. That’s the third character, narrator. / Words. / Words. / Words. That’s what was said.”
(d) Some entries contradict others, building up a Rashomon-style conflict. “Insistence” tells us that the bus was full “because it was 12 noon”; “Official Letter” says the bus was overloaded because the driver “had accepted an overload of several candidates.” (pp. 54, 63).
(e) Some entries permit themselves brief additions at the end, and others don’t. “Ignorance” adds a surprising sentence at the end: “For instance, I remember my father was always telling me about…”
(f) The “Unexpected” last sentence in the last entry is therefore not a surprise: its form is the same as the brief additions in several other entries.
(g) Some entries require and display skill; others do neither. “Noble” is exceptionally skilfull, for example. “Free Verse” includes a nod to Lautréamont.
(h) Some entries do several things at once: they could have been split. “Cross-examination” also has some odd verbal play that has nothing to do with cross-examining. (“it proved to be that of a slightly hypotonic paranoiac cyclothymic…”)
(i) Some entries use the key concept, or title, as an excuse to invent something entirely different. “Spectral” is an entirely new project.
(j) There are three basic kinds of entries: (i) Metaphors, deliberately overdone, like “Gastronomical,” “Botanical,” “Medical.” (ii) Genres of writing, such as “Noble” and “Cross-examination,” and the ode and the operetta. (iii) Classical rhetorical categories, abused. Why aren’t these the only kinds of entries? Why aren’t they ordered? How did he decide on them? These are all sources of divergence from order.
(k) Some entries are based on classical rhetorical categories, but they abuse those categories. “Metathesis,” “Antiphrasis,” “Paragoge,” “Epenthesis,” and others apply the rhetorical tropes, intended for lines of poetry, to individual words. Why, then, does Queneau not similarly abuse his examples of genres of writing, or metaphors?
This is, of course, an open-ended list. But it is not an infinite list, and that’s why it’s a source of interest in reading the book. “Flaws” like these—actually deliberate diversions, which the author permitted himself—are why books like Exercises in Style are engaging, and why contemporary conceptual rule-bound writing often isn’t. (And to return one last time to music and Boulez: this was all done, seventy years ago!, in music, by Boulez and others in his generation.)
Show Less
LibraryThing member lucybrown
Queneau sets for himself the challenge of writing the same story, and it is a very slight story indeed, using several different styles and techniques. This edition also includes the efforts of current writers who have taken up the challenge. The story is something like this, a rather pathetic and
Show More
petulant specimen of man with an overlong neck and a hat with an eccentric band quarrels with another passenger on an overcrowded bus Our hero, as it were, accuses the other gentleman of jostling him, on purpose, no less. Our star then throws himself upon the first available seat. Later in the day the narrator sees the petulant fellow being advised as to the placement of the button of his coat. Queneau's tour de force is to tell this same mundane story multiple ways. Some of his renditions are laugh until you cry funny, others, a bit forced. I would not recommend reading them all at once because the exercise then seems tedious. One or two as a treat after dinner is more the way to go. Each rendition is accompanied by a quirky Thurberesque drawing. These are also assured to bring a few giggles. While Exercises in Style is often considered the author's masterpiece, I still reserve that designation for The Sunday of Life. Show Less
LibraryThing member lucybrown
Queneau sets for himself the challenge of writing the same story, and it is a very slight story indeed, using several different styles and techniques. This edition also includes the efforts of current writers who have taken up the challenge. The story is something like this, a rather pathetic and
Show More
petulant specimen of man with an overlong neck and a hat with an eccentric band quarrels with another passenger on an overcrowded bus Our hero, as it were, accuses the other gentleman of jostling him, on purpose, no less. Our star then throws himself upon the first available seat. Later in the day the narrator sees the petulant fellow being advised as to the placement of the button of his coat. Queneau's tour de force is to tell this same mundane story multiple ways. Some of his renditions are laugh until you cry funny, others, a bit forced. I would not recommend reading them all at once because the exercise then seems tedious. One or two as a treat after dinner is more the way to go. Each rendition is accompanied by a quirky Thurberesque drawing. These are also assured to bring a few giggles. While Exercises in Style is often considered the author's masterpiece, I still reserve that designation for The Sunday of Life. Show Less
LibraryThing member Rex_Lui
A playful exercise that looks like a how-to writing workbook.
LibraryThing member billycongo
In a way, this book is unreviewable. It is exactly what it says it is. Whether you like it or not is simply taste. Could be used as a reference book.
Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
1947
Physical description
224 p.; 7.8 inches
ISBN
9781847492418