AUTHOR: Raymond Queneau
READ: September
THOUGHTS: Enjoyed this book immensely; thought it was hilarious/very interesting/smart. The gist of this book is that a very banal and uninteresting story is repeated 99 times through different manipulations of language, narrative, and perspective. I think this, to me, is so effective because the story itself is lacking any sort of moral component, therefore lending to the variations the brunt of focusing on the 'writing' as opposed to anything else. It also works because Queneau is a really gifted writer with a deft ear. I went through this book in about two hours, and the more I read the less I began to pay attention to the story and the more I began to notice the ease and familiarity w/ which Queneau inhabited the recurring tropes of very disparate styles. I couldn't really get into the 'permutation' variations, or any of the ones that read like gibberish, but I mostly enjoyed this book greatly and will probably re-read it multiple times.
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