Oulipian Novel?

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

Thanks. P-Y Pétillon was a p-list member long ago.

And in 1996, the ever-so-smart-aleck "hankhank" wrote to the p-list
as follows, in an even worse English than his current incarnation:

"Raymond Queneau and his friend Le Lionnais founded OuLiPo at the turn
of the 60s. Partly as a reaction to surrealists, who wanted to see their
art as a spontaneous expression of the unconscious. So surrealists never
really liked Queneau's artificial playfulness. Form and artifice were
important to him and other OuLiPoans, like Harry Mathews, Italo Calvino,
George Perec and Jacques Roubaud etc who joined the group a little bit
later. P-Y Petillon writes in his essay for _The New Essays on Lot 49_
(which I have in a box in Finland) that OuLiPoans felt immediate affinity
with Pynchon. He also tries to show similarities between _Lot 49_ and one
of Harry Mathews' novels, the name of which I've forgotten. Can anyone
help?

So maybe there's the parallel
The Beats   -- TRP and other "pomos" of 60s
Surrealists -- OuLiPo
while we should keep in mind, I think, that in both cases it's not only
a question of reaction, but also that of continuity on some levels."


Heikki

On Wed, 25 Mar 2009, Dave Monroe wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Heikki Raudaskoski
> <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi> wrote:
>
> > In an essay on TCoL49, Pierre-Yves Pétillon writes, among other things,
> > about how the French literati found the novel most Oulipian when it
> > came out. The essay is included in the following collection:
>
> > http://assets.cambridge.org/97805213/81635/sample/9780521381635ws.pdf
>
> http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0903&msg=133952
>