(21 February 1903–25 October 1976)
Very much a smart writer’s smart(est) writer, Queneau was literarily brilliant beyond measure, working in a variety of mostly original ways. After SURREALIST beginnings, he became involved with ‘PATAPHYSICS, an avant-garde parody-philosophy calling itself the “science of imaginary solutions.” In 1960, Queneau cofounded (as well as confounded) Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, commonly known as O ULIPO, along with the mathematician François Le Lionnais (1901–84). In addition to working for a prominent book publisher, as a translator into French (of books such as The Palm Wine Drinkard by AMOS T UTUOLA), and as the principal editor of the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, Queneau published comic pop novels, such as Zazie dans le metro (1959; Zazie, 1960), along with such experimental works as EXERCISES DE STYLE (1947; Exercises in Style, 1958), a tour de force, or farce, in which the same scene is described in ninety-nine different ways.
His avant-garde masterpiece, so audaciously extraordinary it will never be transcended or remotely repeated, is Cent mille milliards de poemes (100,000 Million Million Poems, 1961), in which he wrote ten sonnets whose lines (in place) are interchangeable, because they are die-cut into strips bound to the book’s spine, creating combinatorial sonnet possibilities numbering ten to the fourteenth power. The result is the creation of preconditions for the reader to discover a multitude of relationships not intended. Though daunting, this book has been translated into English, German, and even Polish. Whereas the writing of his near-contemporary Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) was unashamedly heavy, Queneau’s was both light and heavy or, more precisely, heavier because it was so deceptively light.
(17 March 1936–? August 1973)
An innovative British novelist, in more ways than one a contemporary of B.S. JOHNSON, she published Berg (1964), which is a grim farce about a man intending to kill his father. In contrast to British fashions prevailing at the time, she and Johnson wrote not rambling social realism but something else; typically not long sentences but short. ‘Tis said that few wrote more profoundly about a peculiarly British seaside town, in this case Brighton. The theme of her second novel Passages (1969) is quests as told through a narrative and an annotated diary.
Two more novels followed before Quin committed suicide in the English Channel, a few weeks before Johnson similarly excused himself. Nonetheless, Quin is not forgotten, as all her novels were reprinted, not in England but by an American SMALL PRESS, sometimes with respectful introductions and a critical biography. Quin also influenced later radical British writers such as STEWART HOME, who published a long appreciation.