Raymond Queneau

French novelist and poet

• Born: February 21, 1903
• Birthplace: Le Havre, France
• Died: October 25, 1976
• Place of death: Paris, France

Biography

Raymond Queneau (kuh-noh), novelist, poet, critic, editor, playwright, filmmaker, philosopher, mathematician, and painter, is regarded as one of the most audacious and ingenious French writers of the twentieth century, with a career spanning the period from Surrealism to the New Novel. Queneau was born in Le Havre at the beginning of the twentieth century. His mother was Josephine Mignot; his father, a businessman, was Auguste Queneau. After completing his studies at the lycée in Le Havre, Raymond Queneau went on to the University of Paris in 1920 and took his degree in philosophy in 1926. That same year he was called to military duty in Algeria and Morocco.

A year later he returned to Paris, where in 1928 he married Janine Kahn, sister-in-law of André Breton, leader of the Surrealist movement. In 1934 they had a son, Jean-Marie, who became a painter. During the 1920s and 1930s, Queneau took jobs that allowed him a meager income: He worked in a bank, gave private lessons, sold paper tablecloths to inexpensive restaurants, translated books from English into French, and did some journalism, writing a column called “Connaissez-vous Paris?” (Do you know Paris?) for the daily Intransigeant, from 1936 to 1938. In 1938 he became a reader at the prestigious firm Gallimard, which had already published four of his first five books, all novels, and would produce most of his subsequent works.

Queneau’s editorial career was briefly interrupted when he was drafted in August, 1939. Serving in small provincial towns, he was promoted to corporal just before being demobilized in July, 1940. Queneau then returned to Paris. Despite the hardships of World War II, this period was one of intense literary production. In addition to his editorial duties at the Gallimard publishing house, where he became general secretary, he collaborated on clandestine publications and wrote a weekly column for Front National until 1945. He received his credentials as a professional journalist in the same year; however, he was to remain at Gallimard for the rest of his life.

The Surrealist movement had a significant influence on Queneau’s writing, and he became involved in the movement from 1924 to 1925 and again from 1927 to 1929. Although he published a poem and two pieces of automatic writing in the Révolution Surréaliste, André Breton’s journal, central to Queneau’s interest in Surrealism was the way of life it represented: one of total revolt against the bourgeois values. Eventually quarreling with Breton over personal, rather than ideological, concerns (according to Queneau), the latter left the group in 1929. His break with Surrealism, however, left Queneau somewhat unsettled. The crisis led him to reexamine his life through psychoanalytic therapy and to reevaluate his literary goals. Subsequently, Queneau abandoned Surrealist experimentation and began writing his own unique brand of fiction. His first novel, The Bark Tree, appeared in 1933. Although the work is considered one of his best because of its innovative narrative technique and meticulously planned arithmetical composition, it was not a commercial success. Queneau’s reputation as a writer of originality and wit only began to be established with his autobiographical verse-narrative Chêne et chien (oak tree and dog) in 1937.

After the comic novel Pierrot, Queneau published The Skin of Dreams. Besides parodying the existential themes of freedom and absurdity, the work examines the mythmaking function of film as well as film’s relation to wish fulfillment. Literature is the subject in Queneau’s Exercises in Style. In this text, the author recounts an insignificant incident: A person boards a bus, gets his feet stepped on by another passenger, then sits down. This incident, however, is recounted in ninety-nine different styles, each one (like mathematical permutations) varying the arrangement of events, word choice, tone, and emphasis. Deflating the myth of literature, Queneau demonstrates that the writer can create literature out of the most banal, trivial subjects. Exercises in Style became one of Queneau’s best-known works.

In 1960 Queneau cofounded l’Ouvoir de Littérature Potentielle (the workshop of potential literature), or Oulipo, with François Le Lionnais. Oulipo was a group of writers who met to talk about the limitless potential of literary invention. The group, and Queneau, were known for the experimental nature of their work and influenced writers of the New Novel in the 1960s.

Zazie in the Metro became a best-seller when it was published in 1959. The novel’s story of a young girl’s two-day visit with her uncle and his wife in Paris becomes a quasi-epic battle with the forces of evil; the novel questions certain ordering factors in civilization and undermines outworn conventions of language and literature. In 1965 Queneau published what is perhaps his most complex and profound text, The Blue Flowers. In this novel, in which each character is the dream of the other, the author situates dreams in the context of the philosophical tradition of illusion and reality. In their dreams, the dreamers are able to capture essential parts of their own identities. The variety of interpretations possible in this novel allow the reader to enjoy the novel on many different levels.

During his lifetime, Queneau, because of his distance from the mainstream of literary fashion and from literary movements, was given marginal attention by critics. His work, at times, was both greeted enthusiastically and underestimated. Queneau has been called everything from a literary lightweight (for his seemingly frivolous attitude toward literature and life) to a creative genius on the order of James Joyce (for his invention of new literary structures and for his linguistic virtuosity). Regardless, many writers have found affinities with Queneau and have acknowledged his influence.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

Le Chiendent, 1933 (The Bark Tree, 1968)

Gueule de Pierre, 1934

Les Derniers Jours, 1936 (The Last Days, 1990)

Odile, 1937 (English translation, 1988)

Les Enfants du limon, 1938 (Children of Clay, 1998)

Un Rude Hiver, 1939 (A Hard Winter, 1948)

Les Temps mêlés: Gueule de Pierre II, 1941

Pierrot mon ami, 1943 (Pierrot, 1950)

Loin de Rueil, 1944 (The Skin of Dreams, 1948)

On est toujours trop bon avec les femmes, 1947 (We Always Treat Women Too Well, 1981)

Saint-Glinglin, 1948 (Saint Glinglin, 1993)

Journal intime, 1950

Le Dimanche de la vie, 1951 (The Sunday of Life, 1976)

Zazie dans le métro, 1959 (Zazie in the Metro, 1960)

Les OEuvres complètes de Sally Mara, 1962

Les Fleurs bleues, 1965 (The Blue Flowers, 1967)

Le Vol d’Icare, 1968 (The Flight of Icarus, 1973)

Hazard et Fissile, 2008

Short Fiction:

Une trouille verte, 1947

Poetry:

Chêne et chien, 1937 (Raymond Queneau’s “Chêne et Chien”: A Translation with Commentary, 1995)

Les Ziaux, 1943

Foutaises, 1944

L’Instant fatal, 1946

Bucoliques, 1947

Petite Cosmogonie portative, 1950

Si tu t’imagines, 1952

Le Chien à la mandoline, 1958

Cent Mille Milliards de poèmes, 1961 (One Hundred Million Million Poems, 1983)

Texticules, 1961

Courir les rues, 1967

Battre la campagne, 1968

Fendre les flots, 1969

Morale élémentaire, 1975

“Pounding the Pavement,” “Beating the Bushes,” and Other Pataphysical Poems, 1985 (includes partial translations of Courir les rues and Battre la campagne)

Drama:

En passant, pb. 1944

Nonfiction:

Bâtons, chiffres, et lettres, 1950

Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier, 1962

Bords: Mathématiciens, précurseurs, encyclopédistes, 1963

Une histoire modèle, 1966

La Littérature potentielle, 1973

Le voyage en Grèce, 1973

Correspondance Raymond Queneau–Élie Lascaux, 1979

Lettres croisées, 1949–1976, 1988 (with André Blavier; Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, editor)

Traité des vertus démocratiques, 1993 (Emmanuël Souchier, editor)

Dormi pleuré, 1996

Journaux, 1914–1965, 1996 (Anne Isabelle Queneau, editor)

Aux confins des ténèbres: les fous littéraires français du XIXe siècle, 2002

Cher monsieur-Jean-Marie mon fils: lettres 1938–1971, 2003 (Anne Isabelle Queneau, editor)

Edited Texts:

Histoire des littératures, 1956

Miscellaneous:

Exercices de style, 1947 (Exercises in Style, 1958)

Contes et propos, 1981 (Stories and Remarks, 2000)

Bibliography

Baker, Peter. “Raymond Queneau.” Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition, Jan. 2010, pp. 1–7. Literary Reference Center, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=103331CSLF15060147500743&site=eds-live. Accessed 8 June 2017. Biographical essay of Queneau, with brief critical analyses of majors works.

Bastin, Nina. Queneau’s Fictional Worlds. New York: P. Lang, 2002. Critical study includes bibliography and index.

Campbell-Sposito, Mary. “Ça c’est causer? Dialogue and Storytelling in Queneau’s Novels.” French Forum 11 (1986). Discusses Queneau’s use of characterization and dialogue.

Hale, Jane Alison. The Lyric Encyclopedia of Raymond Queneau. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. Entries discuss Queneau’s works in all genres, focusing on his use of language. Includes bibliography.

Kogan, Vivian. The Flowers of Fiction: Time and Space in Raymond Queneau’s “Les Fleurs bleues.” Lexington, Ky.: French Forum, 1982. Kogan attempts a poststructuralist reading that, even with its limitations, offers an original approach to the novel.

Shorley, Christopher. Queneau’s Fiction: An Introductory Study. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Provides a general introduction and criticism of the author’s works.

Thiker, Allen. Raymond Queneau. Boston: Twayne, 1985. Acquaints the reader with Queneau’s major literary works and provides a useful bibliography.

Velguth, Madeleine. The Representation of Women in the Autobiographical Novels of Raymond Queneau. New York: P. Lang, 1990. Provides interpretations of various women characters in Queneau’s fiction.