Queneau, Raymond

Queneau, Raymond (1903-1976), French writer of encyclopedic knowledge, born in Le Havre. He moved to Paris in 1920 to study philosophy and the sciences. His early work was influenced by the Surrealists, and although his first novel, Le Chiendent, was published in 1933, followed by a dozen other novels and several poetry collections, Queneau did not gain widespread recognition until Exercices de style (1949; Exercises in Style, 1958), in which he repeats the same anecdote by using the almost limitless potentialities of the spoken language, and the novel Zazie dans le métro (1959; Zazie, 1960). In 1954 he became Director of the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade and in 1960 he co-founded the “Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle” (OuLiPo), whose purpose was to explore scientifically the potentiality of constraints in literary creation. His literary innovations are principally threefold: the priority given to structure and form over content, denouncing the conventions of the novel genre; the use of a neo-French to reproduce in phonetic orthography the real pronunciation of words; and the concept of the verse-novel, instigated in Chêne et chien (1937). One of the great French exponents of the crisis and experiment of language in the 20th century, Queneau's irony is also exemplified, notably, in the novels Pierrot mon ami (1942), Les Ziaux (1943), Saint-Glinglin (1948); the poetry collections Si tu t'imagines (1952), Petite Cosmogonie portative (1955); and the essay Bâtons, chiffres, et lettres (1950).