courts the two of them through an appeal to English regimental badges and an obviously phony patriotism. He also takes the two to the cinema, after receiving the benevolent blessing of the head of the household, Madeleine, their older sister, who runs a brothel. Annette, the young girl, is one of Queneau’s typically precocious nymphets, and in this way she anticipates two of Queneau’s most famous characters, Sally Mara and Zazie. The way in which Lehameau’s relationship with Annette develops in parallel fashion with his relationship to Miss Weeds is the true core of the novel.

Lehameau and Miss Weeds gradually fall in love, but they are prevented from fulfilling their relationship by a mixture of ignorance and institutional prudery. Miss Weeds, in the service of the British armed forces, at first resists Lehameau’s overtures. When she later gives in to her feelings and they are on the verge of consummating their relationship, Miss Weeds is abruptly transferred back to England, effectively ending their relationship. The double standard of British morality is clearly Queneau’s target here: Miss Weeds is protected by the military bureaucracy from the morally dangerous Frenchman; at the same time, Madeleine’s primary customers in her bordello are the English soldiers stationed in Le Havre. Lehameau temporarily overcomes his sorrow at losing Miss Weeds through a brief tryst with Madeleine, at which time he also loses his virginity. In a surprise ending, on the last page of the book Lehameau marries—Annette. The various levels of irony at work in the novel prevent the reader finally from making any rigorous moral judgments on the actions of the characters.

Exercises in Style and We Always Treat Women Too Well

Queneau’s career as a novelist took a strange turn in 1947, when he published two very different works. Exercises in Style is not a novel at all, but there are many who regard it as Queneau’s greatest achievement. In a dazzling series of ninety-nine variations, the writer tests language to the limits of its possibilities. The narrative kernel remains constant throughout the various treatments: The speaker sees a strangely dressed man on a bus; the man angrily accuses a fellow passenger of stepping on his toes, then quickly grabs a vacant seat; two hours later, the speaker sees the man again talking with a man near the Gare Saint-Lazare. From formal logical analysis to haiku, from street slang to Anglicisms to Italianisms, Queneau shows that the work of the literary imagination has as its primary material language itself.

Queneau’s other work published in 1947 is his parody of the scandal novel, We Always Treat Women Too Well, which he published under the pseudonym Sally Mara. Ostensibly, the work is the translation into French by Michel Presle of a work originally written in Gaelic by Sally Mara, and it presents an account of the events in a post office taken over by Irish nationalist insurgents during the Easter Rising of 1916. The insurgents are inconvenienced when they find, after securing the post office and releasing the postal workers, that Gertie Girdle has been left behind, locked in a ladies room. Poking fun at the macho posturing of men during wartime (as the title suggests), Queneau shows how the insurgents’ freedom of speech and behavior are seriously constrained by this woman’s presence. Gertie also turns out to be more than they bargained for when her long-repressed sexuality reaches full flower and she becomes a seducer. Queneau has great fun with theconventions of both the action novel and the pornographic novel and characteristically enjoys manipulating language and literary reference: The insurgents’ password, for example, is “Finnegans wake!”

The reader is instantly alerted to the tongue-in-cheek nature of the book through its style. The doorman who guards the post office opens the novel with “God save the King!” but is quickly dispatched, as follows: He did no more than murmur, this time, for he had already manifested his loyalty to such an extent that Corny Kelleher had wasted no time in injecting a bullet into his noggin. The dead doorman vomited his brains through an eighth orifice in his head, and fell flat on the floor.

As the insurgents’ names suggest, Queneau’s Ireland owes more to a reading of the work of James Joyce than to the accounts of Irish history. By the conclusion of the first chapter, the insurgents have expelled the remaining postal employees—they think—and have secured the post office. From the perspective of one of the insurgents, Dillon, the chapter concludes, “No more virgins offended his view.”

While spoofing the action-and-sex novel, Queneau also incorporates his more serious literary models, using the unreliable narrator associated with the work of Joseph Conrad and the interior monologue style of Joyce. When Gertie Girdle takes over the narrative in chapter 4, it is as though she had stepped straight from the pages of Joyce right into (where else?) the ladies’ room. Her simple mind reviews its limited contents: the state of modern plumbing, her intended, whether she should fix her hair again. When she sees an armed insurgent, her mind follows its own logic: He is armed and dangerous, he must be a Republican, only the British can save me, I will wait in the ladies room, they cannot touch me in here, it is only proper. As in A Hard Winter, the French perspective on Anglo-Saxon prudishness gives the writer plenty of material for his humorous purposes.

The humor turns dark as the novel progresses. Gertie is initiated into sex in the prurient style that the novel parodies, then begins to take an active role. At the same time the military position of the insurgents deteriorates, and they come under direct attack from British gunboats. The two situations intertwine in the narrative. As the shelling begins, one shot takes off Caffrey’s head as he makes love to Gertie: “The body continued its rhythmic movement for a few more seconds, just like the male of the praying mantis whose upper part has been half-devoured by the female but who perseveres in his copulation.” After Gertie frees herself, she considers the situation and concludes, “That’s one less.” Though shaken by the violence and initiated into not only sex but also, strangely enough, tenderness, Gertie’s deepest feelings remain those of patriotism. She even evinces her satisfaction when the post office finally falls and the remaining insurgents are summarily executed before her eyes. Throughout the book, humor and wordplay predominate, rendering the outrageous situations of the narrative pathetic and human in Queneau’s unique way.

Journal intime

Queneau returned to writing as Sally Mara and eventually admitted to his authorship of “her” works with the publication of her Journal intime (intimate diary) in 1950. Once again, Queneau plays off the supposed prudishness and simplemindedness of his characters in the Irish setting, but, as always, through the lens of language. Journal intime is set in 1934-1935, at which time Sally Mara is studying Gaelic in order to write a novel and is still an almost incredibly naïve late adolescent. Journal intime is the story of her initiation into sexual matters in spite of rampant simplicity and a total lack of knowledge at the outset. In the manner of the five blind men and the elephant, Sally slowly progresses in her knowledge of the male sexual organs through a long process of trial-and-error experimentation.

The journal opens with Sally on the pier lamenting the return to France of her French teacher, Michel Presle. Through his inspiration, she resolves to write her journal in French (with the accompanying humoristic possibilities this opens up for the author). As she makes her way back down the gangplank, someone identified only as “un gentleman” advises her to “Tenez bon la rampe, mademoiselle” (“Hang on tight, miss”). She recalls that “At the same time was placed effectually in my free hand an object which had both the rigidity of a steel bar and the softness of velvet.” Sally retains from this experience an everlasting respect for the kind qualities of the “gentleman” and the beginnings of her inquiry into that object she had held.

Sally’s Gaelic lessons with Padraic Baoghal plunge her at once into the ambience of Irish nationalism as well as into a fertile arena for contact and further knowledge of men. One of these is her fellow student, Barnabé Pudge, who admires Sally from a repressed distance, but with the tenacity required to succeed eventually. During a sequence of darkened seances conducted by Baoghal’s wife, who is a spiritual medium, Sally conducts her researches, which she began that night on the pier and continued in the darkness of a motion-picture theater one afternoon with Barnabé. Meanwhile, Sally’s home life reveals how she could be so ignorant in the first place.

Sally’s mother is a simpleminded woman who awaits the return of her husband by knitting socks for him. Sally’s father left the family one night, saying he needed to buy a box of matches, and has yet to return, though many years have passed. This suits Sally, whose memories of her father are dominated by his practice of administering prolonged bare-bottomed spankings to her on a daily basis. Her brother is another simpleton, who sees life through an alcoholic stupor but who nevertheless manages to father a child by the family cook, Mrs. Killarney. As the birth of the child approaches, Sally wonders how the conception could have taken place in the absence of a marriage ceremony, and Mrs. Mara denies that her son could have played any role at all. In short, Sally’s family, like some primitive culture from the dawn of time, remains partially in ignorance of the connection between sex and reproduction. Almost like someone who must reinvent the alphabet, Sally is left to discover the connection on her own; and discover the connection she does.

Sally’s curiosity is satisfied to some extent when her uncle takes her that summer to see the coupling of two goats (a neologism made from the word for “billy goat” remains her verb for intercourse throughout the book). She is also aided by the discovery of the mythological miniatures painted by Mrs. Baoghal, which show the heroes’ full equipment. At this time she also has her first experience of sexual pleasure, with the Baoghal’s lesbian housemaid, Mève. While Sally’s researches continue, her brother makes an honest woman of Mrs. Killarney, her father returns for a time, and she loses her virginity to a tough named Tim. At the end of the book, she does indeed marry Barnabé Pudge. This time, however, as they are boarding the boat for their honeymoon and Barnabé urges her to hold on tight, she is disappointed: “I moved my hand in the darkness, but all I found was a damp, cold rope. I understood then that my conjugal life had begun.” The verve and humor that Queneau brings to Sally’s exploits gently mock conventional morality while constructing a sense of the contradictory nature of sexual wisdom and ignorance.

The Sunday of Life

Queneau took the title for his next novel, The Sunday of Life, from a celebrated passage by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in which the philosopher is discussing the depiction of peasant life in Dutch painting. Queneau’s understanding runs parallel to the philosopher’s belief that there is something so bright, so cheery in the lives of simple people that it seems that they must by their very nature be closer to the Ideal. This understanding by Queneau informs all of his work and, whether the setting is Le Havre, Ireland, or the working-class sections of Paris, it is what keeps the humor in the work from simply demeaning the characters. Queneau would rather investigate the naïve wisdom of the common person than the pompous idiocies of the wise.

Valentin Brû, the protagonist of The Sunday of Life, is one of Queneau’s most fascinating characters. From his speech and his reactions to other people, one would have to judge him a simpleton, yet his clear-sighted view of the large scale of world events enables him to prosper in even the most difficult circumstances. The reader first sees Valentin through the eyes of two sisters, Chantal and Julia, who watch him from the window of their mother’s haberdashery. Chantal teases her sister that she should marry this attractive soldier. Valentin has just returned from a campaign in Madagascar and is being housed in one of the local barracks. Through the machinations of Chantal and her husband, Paul, Valentin is indeed discharged and marries Julia, though she is some fifteen years his senior.

As in all of Queneau’s work, the main action of the novel is in the language itself. In this case the simplicity of the characters’ thought processes actually regulates their subsequent actions. Here, Valentin and Julia discuss their honeymoon and whether they can afford to let it interrupt their shopkeeping. No, of course, not, said Valentin. You see, then, said Julia. And yet, said Valentin, and yet, it’s obligatory, a honeymoon.Maybe we could put the honeymoon off until our next vacation, suggested Valentin. And when will we take the vacation, then? Julia objected. And he had no answer to that. They ended up by adopting the only possible solution, the one and only, to wit that Valentin alone would go on the honeymoon alone.

So Valentin sets off on an uproarious trip that involves humorous encounters with taxi drivers, prostitutes, and hoteliers. His simplicity both gets him into trouble and keeps him from being affected by it. The next thing he knows, he is graveside at a funeral and is reunited with his spouse, by accident.

The very next chapter contains another funeral, that of the mother Nanette, who leaves her shop and money to Valentin. Besides the recriminations he faces from his wife’s family, he must face one of his worst fears at the dinner that follows the funeral: oysters. The language gains in exuberance from the protagonist’s fears. The oysters are referred to as animaux ostréicultivés, glaviusque molleux, lamellibranches, and mollusques crus. These coinages test the ingenuity of the translator, who rises to the occasion with “ostreicultivated animals,” “goblike mollusk,” “lamellibranchia,” and “raw mollusks.” Valentin defends his distaste with the claim that they are living animals. “They’re only just alive,” said Paul. “They’re just as alive as you and me,” said Valentin. “Funny comparisons you make,” said Julia. “It’s true, though,” said Valentin. “An oyster, it’s a living creature. Just as much as I am. Zno difference. Zonly one difference: between the living and the dead.” “You aren’t very tactful,” said Chantal.

All this wordplay and ludicrous conversation does come in the context of a commemoration of a departed relative. Yet this is simply Queneau’s way of dealing with the eternal mysteries of human existence. Behind the apparently subhuman intelligence of a character such as Valentin, there is a deeper understanding of human existence than that found in many other more portentous works of literature.

The Sunday of Life takes a final series of narrative turns when Julia becomes a fortune-teller under the name Madame Saphir. Valentin’s failing business allows him plenty of time to gossip, which gossip he, in turn, feeds to Julia. When Julia suffers a stroke, Valentin must take her place, and with his simpleminded wisdom he enjoys a greater success than she ever did. As the outbreak of World War II approaches, the prophecies grow darker. Even war, however, cannot fundamentally affect Valentin’s destiny. He is remobilized, made a prisoner of war, and released. When Julia finds him at last, he is helping three female refugees climb into a crowded train through the window: “Julia choked with laughter: it was so as to get his hand on their behinds.” The Sunday of Life is buoyant with such good cheer.

Zazie in the Metro

Zazie in the Metro is probably Queneau’s best-known work. From its celebrated opening word Doukipudonktan (or, “Howcanaystinksotho,” in other words, “Who is it thus emitting such a stench?”) through its full sequence of zany adventures and outrageous word creations, Zazie in the Metro is a tour de force of comic wit and invention. A spiritual sister of Annette and Sally Mara, Zazie is all street-smarts and foul language. In the novel, the title of which bears her name, the joke is on her: What she most looks forward to doing in Paris, riding the Metro, is the one thing she does not do in the book, since the Metro workers are on strike during her visit.

Zazie arrives in Paris for a visit with her uncle, Gabriel, so that her mother can spend some time with her lover. Uncle Gabriel fits the pattern of Queneau’s male characters and is a bit of a simpleton. For the first part of the book, he hides the true nature of his nocturnal employment from Zazie; in fact, he is a male stripper in a gay bar. Gabriel and his even more simpleminded friend, Charles, who drives a taxi, meet Zazie at the train station and bring her back to the apartment that Gabriel shares with his wife, Marceline. Much of the action in the first half of the book takes place in the apartment or in the bar in the basement of the same building. The bar’s owner is named Turandot, and his only waitress is Mado (short for Madeleine), but he also has a parakeet to keep him company. The parakeet’s name is Laverdure, and he has one comment that he makes throughout the book: “Tu causes, tu causes, c’est tout ce que tu sais faire” (“Talk, talk, that’s all you can do”). Interestingly, his comment almost always rings true in context.

Zazie has trouble staying put, so on the morning of her second day, while Gabriel is still asleep after his night’s work, she leaves the apartment. Charles tries to catch up to her and protect her from harm, but she accuses him of molesting her and, after an indignant crowd gathers, makes her escape. She then picks up the novel’s other main character, at first only referred to as the type (guy). At first it appears that he is a child molester; later in the book he reappears as Trouscaillon, an undercover police officer; still later he appears as Bertin Poirée and Aroun Arachide. It is to the type that Zazie recounts the story of her life, particularly that her mother murdered her father. Her father, it seems, was a drunk who had sexual designs on the nubile Zazie. The mother is aware of this and borrows an ax from her lover, George (a fact that is revealed during Zazie’s testimony at the trial). One day, the mother says that she is going to the store for some spaghetti, but she actually lies in wait for the father to make his move. Zazie recounts the events: “Just then, she opens the door, quiet as can be, and comes in calmly, my papa he had his mind on other things the poor slob, he wasn’t paying attention you might say, and that’s how he got his skull split open. You have to hand it to her, she made a good job of it, my mamma. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Even sickening. Enough to give me a complex.”

Yet Zazie, in fact, seems to be one of the least “complexed” characters in the book. Her cheerful, worldly-wise naïveté carries her through the book’s events and situations with a casual aplomb.

An ill-starred trip to see the Eiffel Tower, their encounter there with a busload of tourists, a subsequent chase through the streets of Paris, Gabriel’s treating everyone to an evening at his nightclub, a subsequent celebration, fracas, and shooting—all this and more finds Zazie cheerful and wisecracking as usual. She is a very tired girl, however, when her uncle Gabriel returns her to her mother the next day. Zazie’s madcap adventures seem cinematic in their conception, and it is probably no accident that Louis Malle’s film adaptation is one of the small gems of the French cinema.

Throughout his career as a novelist, Queneau brought a wise and compassionate concern to the lives of ordinary people. That he used sometimes brilliant humor and an always engaging sense of play with language are two reasons that his work is now seen as a forerunner to the successive generation of French New Novelists. No matter what tradition literary historians place him in, Queneau will remain a unique literary figure.