Queneau, Raymond (Vol. 5) | Queneau, Raymond 1903–
Queneau, Raymond 1903–
Queneau, a French surrealist writer, is the author of many novels, one play, screenplays, poetry, and essays. For Queneau, life is so absurd that only laughter makes it tolerable. He has been called a "virtuoso of style" and master of "bawdy language growing in a field of glorious rhetoric." In addition to his creative work, Queneau planned and edited the immense Encyclopédie de la Pléiade.
Queneau is not the first writer to contend with literature. Ever since "literature" has existed (that is, judging from the word's date, since quite recently), we can say that the writer's function is to oppose it. What distinguishes Queneau is that his opposition is a hand-to-hand combat: his entire oeuvre cleaves to the myth of literature, his contestation is alienated, it feeds on its object, always leaving substance enough for new meals: the noble edifice of written form still stands, but worm-eaten, scaling,...
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