IdleRich

IdleRich
Nah, we've discussed him before though. I think Woops mentioned him too. That Tlooth book.
Yeah I think I've tried to sell you on him before.
Years and years ago I was at a second hand book stall just on the street with a friend and he suddenly went "Aha!" and kinda swooped in on a book which turned out to be Tlooth. He asked if I knew what it was but I had no idea and so he passed it on to me and another journey began.

I particularly liked The Conversions which despite being extremely weird is surprisingly readable, and I think it gets compared to The Crying of Lot 49 at times

At a dinner party hosted by a wealthy New Yorker, a guest receives a gold adze, the coveted prize in a worm race.
When the man dies the next day (that's the host not the guest), he bequeaths, according to a stipulation in his will, the bulk of his fortune to the adze's possessor, provided he answer three mysterious questions relating to the artifact's history. In his search the owner encounters a menagerie of eccentric personalities: an ancient revolutionary in a Parisian prison, a ludicrous pair of gibberish-speaking brothers, and customs officials who spend their time reading contraband materials. He soon finds himself immersed in the centuries-long history of a persecuted religious sect and in an odyssey that begins in a forgotten fog-covered town in Scotland and ends on the ocean floor off the cost of an uncharted French island. A wild goose chase through a remarkably unusual world, The Conversions invites both reader and protagonist to participate in a quest for answers to an elusive game.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Funny to talk about an American so much in the French thread but he was a kind of honorary Frenchman at times I think, lived in Paris, only American member of Oulipo and so on.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
So you turn a table upside down? I do understand what that physically is. But what I'm not getting is... why those symbols appeared there? When I put a list of connected authors and films and stuff... I mean, did you then get so excited that you kicked over a table, and then you thought you would tell us about by way of a weird collection of symbols that I mistook for some kind of complex symbolic logic or higher level maths that I couldn't understand? Was it a big table? Did it have a load of stuff on it? Was it in your house or were you at a friend's house - or worse, in a posh restaurant? What is the connection between Raymond Roussel and tables?
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Ah

Flipping Tables (written as: (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻) is a text-based emoticon depicting a person flipping a table out of rage. Primarily used by East Asian internet users to express rage, the emoticon became popular among Western internet users following its introduction through internationally popular online games.

So, what on earth is so annoying about Roussel?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Duz writing a book without using tha fifth symbol of tha ABC still count if you maik up your own spälling?
 
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catalog

Well-known member
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.
Yeah I read that a while back, enjoyed it. I think it's the first of a planned trilogy? I'm keeping an eye on him.
 

sus

Well-known member
Ah

So, what on earth is so annoying about Roussel?
Quit being so literal Rich! Maybe sometimes tables are flipped from annoyance. I was flipping it triumphantly and energetically, full of enthusiasm for the Great Citation Web
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
i am partial to women speaking english with a french accent. i work with one girl from france - basically, everything she says sounds better. she also has incredible hair.
 
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