Oulipo

Rules and constraints = freedom and adventure. (Vol. 2; Issue 33)

Welcome aboard The Bus!

The Stop

Founded in 1960 by poet and novelist Raymond Queneau¹ and mathematician François Le Lionnais,² Oulipo - an acronym for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (Workshop of Potential Literature) - originated as a group of writers united by the common ‘aim of exploring the benefits of mathematics and rule-based constraints for the writing of literature.’ Rejecting the role of ‘spontaneous chance and the subconscious as sources of literary creativity,’ the group emphasises ‘systematic, self-restricting means of making texts.’ Having existed for over five decades, it is the longest lasting ‘structured group in the history of French literature.’³

Ambigram Oulipo/Wikimedia Commons

Originally conceived as a ‘subcommittee’ of Alfred Jarry’s⁴ Collège de ‘Pataphysique - a parodic philosophy of science often described as the ‘science of imaginary solutions’ - Oulipo maintains the ‘acceptance of rigorous formal constraints’ is the best way to liberate artistic potential. Dedicated to the pursuit of new forms and types of literature - and the identification of historical examples of attempts to use constraints to free the imagination⁵ - Oulipo’s members are attached to the ‘serious pleasures’ of words games and have an interest in the ‘playful aspects of literary compostion’ which results in occasionally ‘unbelievably demanding forms.’ 

There are generally three principal forms of constraints under which members of Oulipo write: (1) strict constraints, such as writing without a particular letter, writing using only a single vowel or adhering to fixed-form poetry styles,⁶ (2) ‘combinational literature,’ in which a set of random phrases are combined in different ways to produce countless varieties of poems or stories,⁷ and (3) techniques which transform or ‘translate’ existing texts. This particular constraint includes Oulipo’s N+7 method, in which all nouns in a given sentence are changed to the word that comes seven places ahead in a dictionary, e.g.: ‘To be, or not to be, that is the quiche.’⁸

The best way to get a picture of Oulipo’s work is to read examples and while a quick Google search will provide more than enough, for the really interested Phillip Terry’s The Penguin Book of Oulipo (London: Penguin, 2019) is a treasure trove. However, as a taste, here is the opening of today’s Recommendation: Georges Perec’s A Void, a 300 page novel in which the letter ‘e’ never appears: 

Incurably insomniac, Anton Vowl turns on a light. According to his watch it’s only 12.20. With a loud and languorous sigh Vowl sits up, stuffs a pillow at his back, draws his quilt up around his chin, picks up his whodunit and idly scans a paragraph or two; but, judging its plot impossibly difficult to follow in his condition, its vocabulary too whimsically multisyllabic for comfort, throws it away in disgust.

Padding into his bathroom, Vowl dabs at his brow and throat with a damp cloth.

It’s a soft, warm night and his blood is racing through his body. An indistinct murmur wafts up to his third-floor flat. Far off, a church clock starts chiming - a chiming as mournful as a last post, as an air-raid alarm, as an SOS signal from a sinking ship. And, in his own vicinity, a faint lapping sound informs him that a small craft is at that instant navigating a narrow canal.

The Detour

Today’s Detour is to a short (2:40) video by Brett Foxwell, ‘The Book of Leaves.’ Foxwell collected over 12,000 leaves for the sequence - and used more than 2,400 in the end. An amazing variety of shapes and sizes, all set to a great guitar soundtrack.

The Book of Leaves

The Recommendation

Today’s Recommendation is the most famous novel produced by a member of Oulipo: Georges Perec’s A Void (1969).⁹ First published in French as La disparition and later translated by Gilbert Adair into English, the novel is an example of a lipogram – a type of constrained writing in which a particular letter or group of letters is prohibited. Perec’s 300 page novel (and Adair’s translation) was written without the letter e – the most common letter in French and English. A parody of noir and horror fiction, its twisty, tricky plot follows a group of individuals looking for a lost companion – and it works, both as a lipogram and as fiction. It’s quite the tale – and a disorienting reading experience.¹⁰ Give it a try. 

From the inside flap: As his country is torn apart by social and political anarchy, A Void’s protagonist, Anton Vowl, a chronic insomniac, is unaccountably found missing. Ransacking his Paris flat, a group of his faithful companions trawl through his diary for any indication, for any faint hint, as to his location. All that it brings to light, though, is Vowl’s liking (uncannily similar to his author’s) for parody, wordplay and dazzling fictional constructs, constructs which continually risk spiralling out of control. And, gradually, insidiously, a ghost from Vowl’s past starts to cast its malignant shadow …

This is a story chock-full of plots and subplots, of loops within loops, of trails in pursuit of tails, all of which allow its author an opportunity to display his customary virtuosity as an avant-gardist magician, acrobat and clown.

A Void’s translator, too, is just as brilliant at such linguistic conjuring tricks, fully, unflinchingly, assuming a monstrous constraint laid down by its author - which is to say, to propound a gripping Gothic fiction, a fiction with lots of twists and turns, with a Russian-doll construction worthy of Calvino, of John Barth, of Jan Potocki’s Manuscript Found at Saragossa, without at any point invoking that most basic prop of traditional syntax: an e!

Remember: You can buy A Void at Amazon, but you can also get it from your local new or used bookstore - or check it out from the library. And those options are better for everyone.

The Sounds

Today’s playlist is - in the spirit of the Stop - a selection of five tracks from artists who I think in many ways embrace the experimental spirit of Oulipo: ‘Mystery Hole’ (Bongwater, 1990), ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ (The Flaming Lips, 1993), ‘Jerry Was a Race Car Driver’ (Primus, 1991), ‘Cough Syrup’ (Butthole Surfers, 1996) and ‘Pork Roll Egg and Cheese’ (Ween, 1991). Enjoy! 

The Thought

Today’s Thought is attributed to Benjamin Franklin,¹¹ who - though there appears to be no solid citation - may have written something similar. Accurately credited to him or not, it’s a good one: 

‘Many people die at twenty-five and aren’t buried until they are seventy-five.’

If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:

And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!

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Until the next stop …

1. For more information, see: Raymond Queneau (Britannica).

2. For more information, see: Francois Le Lionnais.

3. I first discovered Oulipo in the 1990s when reading Italo Calvino, a member of the group. Their insistence on how rigour and structure allows freedom of creativity struck me then and remains with me to this day - and when I was given the Penguin collection of Oulipo for Christmas a few years back, my interest was rekindled. Sources for today’s Stop include: Oulipo (Britannica) and Terry, Philip, ed. The Penguin Book of Oulipo: Queneau, Perec, Calvino and the Adventure of Form. London: Penguin, 2019.

4. For more information, see: Alfred Jarry (Britannica).

5. These are referred to as examples of ‘anticipatory plagiarism,’ and while these include works by authors such as Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll, they also stretch back as far as 3rd century China’s tradition of reversible poems. This style of literature peaked in the work of Su Hui - who ‘embroidered a grid of 840 characters on silk that could be read in an estimated 12,000 ways.’

6. The most famous example is Georges Perec’s novel, A Void - today’s Recommendation.

7. An example would be Queneau’s ‘A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems’ which is composed of 10 sonnets, each on a separate page so that its fourteen lines can be cut into strips. The reader is invited to rearrange these 140 strips in every possible variation and create, well … a lot of poems.

8. Because there are so many dictionaries - and thus many different seventh words - this is a perfect example of the flexibility within the constraints championed by Oulipo.

9. For more about Perec, see: Georges Perec (Britannica).

10. I read it years ago without knowing the constraint - and the effect was remarkable. The absence of e required Perec to adopt a gymnastic approach to his word choice which affects the reading experience: I knew something was missing, but wasn’t sure what it was.

11. For more information, see: Benjamin Franklin (Britannica).