L’insiemista – Raymond Queneau

  • Raymond 1araymondqueaneauQueneau

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    The above is a found video experiment inspired by Raymond Queneau.
    Raymond Queneau was born on February 21, 1903 in Le Havre.

    Although Queneau’s novels give an impression of enormous spontaneity, they were in fact painstakingly conceived in every small detail. He even once remarked that he simply could not leave to hazard the task of determining the number of chapters of a book. Talking about his first novel, Le Chiendent (usually translated as The Bark Tree), he pointed out that it had 91 sections, because 91 was the sum of the first 13 numbers, and also the product of two numbers he was particularly fond of: 7 and 13.

    Readng Raymond Queneau by Barbara Wright

    Darkly interview on Queneau

    Ouilipo <> <> <> Zazie dans le Metro (Directed by Louis Malle)
    “Under the Net” Iris Murdoch’s first novel was dedicated to R. Queneau.

    Iris Murdoch’s first published novel, Under the Net, presents the picaresque adventures of Jake Donaghue, a feckless failed artist who guides the reader on pub crawls through London’s City district and Paris’s Left Bank while he searches for love and meaning in his life. The novel is dedicated to French novelist Raymond Queneau, and Murdoch has admitted his and Samuel Beckett’s influence in this work: “I was copying them as hard as I could!”

    Queneau spent much of his life working for French publisher Gallimard, where he began as a reader in 1938, rose to be general secretary, and eventually became director of l’Encyclopédie de la Pléiade in 1956.

    More on Feb 21 birthday writers

    Anais Nin was born on the same day, Feb 21, 1903.
    Here on youtube you can hear her voice, talking about Miller and Durrell.

    Two American writers were born on Feb 21, 1962 Chuck Palahniuk and David Foster Wallace.