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<p>"[A] groundbreaking portrait of one of the twentieth century's most influential French writers."--<i>H-France </i></p> <p>"Jordan Stump has done anglophone readers a great service in providing this well-chosen, thoughtfully translated collection."<i>Times Literary Supplement</i></p> <p>"A deeply compelling narrative of an encyclopedic, infinitely inquisitive, rigorous mind at work, right in the thick of things, over a period of four decades. . . . The translations are luminous ones, rigorously faithful to both the letter and the spirit of the original. . . . This is an important book, one that is long overdue, a book that will be welcomed by serious readers of any stripe, whether amateur or professional."--<i>Review of Contemporary Fiction</i></p>
Compiled from two volumes of Raymond Queneau's essays (BÂtons, chiffres et lettres and Le Voyage en GrÈce), these selections find Queneau at his most playful and at his most serious, eloquently pleading for a certain classicism even as he reveals the roots of his own wildly original oeuvre. Ranging from the funny to the furious, they follow Queneau from modernism to postmodernism by way of countless fascinating detours, including his thoughts on language, literary fashions, myth, politics, poetry, and other writers (Faulkner, Flaubert, Hugo, and Proust). Translator Jordan Stump provides an introduction as well as explanatory notes about key figures and Queneau himself.