IdleRich

IdleRich
what's a good place to start with georges perec?
The only one I have read is La Disparition or A Void as it's called in English. If you don't know it has the constraint of containing no "E"s whatsoever, and yet it reads rather well, to the extent that I believe one reviewer didn't even notice that and reviewed it as a straight forward novel. Also I have to say here that I read it in English translation which is of course interesting in itself that someone (Gilbert Adair) had to render the book into English, preserving meaning AND still with not a single instance of the letter E. Just thinking about that boggles my mind.... although it also puts me in mind of a quote which I wish I could remember or find from Thomas de Quincey which anticipated Oulipo rather well which was something disparaging those who write under constraints as being akin to runners in a race who handicap themselves artificially to gain the greater garlands when they win.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
If you are interested in this kind of thing then I would recommend Raymond Roussel - at one point I was really fascinated by a whole group of stuff that span off in all kinds of directions and rejoined itself - I suppose what I'm describing is a network or web of loads of books that I liked and then films of those books and then other films by the same film-makers and then other books that those film-makers liked that I liked too and so on and Roussel was arguably at the heart or maybe the start of all of that. Something that, if you enjoy, I can imagine you really getting your teeth into in the way that you very often and admirably do @catalog

 

jenks

thread death
Tony White’s Fountain the Forest is a good recent example of using constraints to great effect. And of course, Their Brilliant Careers by an Australian Oulipo practitioner has a lot of fun with it all too.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Let me try and elaborate on that... just to get you started (if you're interested)

Raymond Roussel wrote Locus Solus - it was made into a film (kind of) by the Brothers Quay who also made a film called Street of Crocodiles which is based on the writings of Bruno Schulz who also wrote The Hourglass Sanatorium which was made into a film by Jerzy Has who also made a film called The Saragossa Manuscript which was based on a book by Potocki called The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

Locus Solus was also a big influence on The Invention of Morel which was in turn a big influence on the film Last Year at Marienbad which was directed by Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet who became one of my favourite film makers and also a writer I find very interesting (although I think I've made it clear that I kinda hate his last book quite a lot)

Raymond Roussel wrote a book called How I Wrote Certain of My Books - which was clearly a big influence on Oulipo and which led me into reading Perec and several other guys, most notably Harry Matthews who wrote Tlooth and The Conversions and some other very weird books which - to my mind - overlap considerably with Pynchon. And also, I don't know if it's explicitly stated but Burroughs cut up technique might also be viewed as some sort of indirect descendant of Roussel, and then that led me backwards to Djuna Barnes and Denton Welch and....

That's just off the top of my head but there was so much stuff where one thing carried me on to another and another and it all felt somehow connected. And I've just seen Jenks mention Their Brilliant Careers which I read on his recommendation and really loved. One of the few things that has really made me laugh repeatedly out loud when reading it. So much so I had to lend it to a friend who heard me and wondered what all the fuss was about.
 
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sus

Moderator
But actually it's the "All communication is manipulation" phrase

It took me down a road into... Well psychedelic places.
 

sus

Moderator
If you are interested in this kind of thing then I would recommend Raymond Roussel - at one point I was really fascinated by a whole group of stuff that span off in all kinds of directions and rejoined itself - I suppose what I'm describing is a network or web of loads of books that I liked and then films of those books and then other films by the same film-makers and then other books that those film-makers liked that I liked too and so on and Roussel was arguably at the heart or maybe the start of all of that.
The Great Citation Web (╯ರ ~ ರ)╯︵ ┻━┻
 

sus

Moderator
Who've you been reading?
Sorta a weird list but I think they add up to an analytic-continental hybrid foundation for the social construction/reality idea

So, Schelling on bargaining, Goffman on performativity and game-playing, late Wittgenstein, some Garfinkel and Schutz (esp on typification). Pierre Bourdieu always, and some Anthony Wilden. A lot of the more cybernetic or ecological stuff (which has analytic overlap) like Gregory Bateson, smatterings of Deleuze.
 

sus

Moderator
I should return to that De Landa stuff you posted a while back, on Deleuze. Also there was that good Leibniz Deleuze lecture. I liked it then wonder what I would think now
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
@version have you read Harry Matthews? The way you get so deep into Pynchon, find all these meanings within meanings... I think you would have an absolute field day with The Conversions or The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium. The latter is an epistolary novel written partly in a made up language and involving a secret society with a bizarre initiation rite, a search for lost treasure and a title that in a sense is completely meaningless in that it refers to nothing in the book. Sort of.
 
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version

Well-known member
@version have you read Harry Matthews? The way you get so deep into Pynchon, find all these meanings within meanings... I think you would have an absolute field day with The Conversions or The Sinking of the...

Nah, we've discussed him before though. I think Woops mentioned him too. That Tlooth book.
 
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