Admirers of Calvino, Perec, Duchamp, et al. will enjoy the literary lunacy.
“Morphism / Homomorphism / Endomorphism / Automorphism.” For readers with a yen for continental esoterica, this gathering of work by the Oulipo writers of the 1960s and beyond is just the thing.
Founded in 1960 as a descendant of the Dada-like “pataphysical” school of Alfred Jarry and company, the Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop of Potential Literature) movement experimented with mathematical formulas, palindromes, wordplay, language games (such as George Perec’s Les revenentes, the only vowel in which is “e”), and other such proto-postmodern pursuits. Sometimes the effects were arid, sometimes entertaining. Sometimes, as editor Monk writes of the opening piece by Oulipo co-founder Raymond Queneau, the results even approached an “elliptical evocation of the whole of existence,” though that may be a rather grand claim for prose that includes the line, “I also pooed: in my linen.” If anything, forced by its constraints, Oulipo work is often absurd, with an anthropologist-from-Mars quality: “The nail varnish to the left of the machine is not exactly nail varnish,“ writes Michèle Audin, “but a product of the same kind, called a ‘corrector’ and intended to make good the ‘typing errors’ on the fine stencil sheets.” Or, as a poem by Daniel Levin Becker has it, “I barked like a bear, skipped like a spud. / I braised a baked Alaska. / I parked a kids’ bike beside a biker bar.” And so on. Readers attuned to the playful excesses of Situationism or to the goofier of Andrei Codrescu’s essays will enjoy Monk’s anthology, but newcomers will probably feel as if left slightly on the outside of a private joke. As always, some pieces are better than others; as movement member Jacques Duchateau notes, “some tricks are traps; some writers are bad.” He then goes on to wonder, “But, if all literature contains artifice, since artifice can be mechanized, at least in theory, does this mean that literature in turn can be mechanized as well?” It’s worth pondering….
Admirers of Calvino, Perec, Duchamp, et al. will enjoy the literary lunacy.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-944211-52-3
Page Count: 353
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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