Exercices de style

Raymond Queneau tells one trivial story ninety-nine times. A man on a Paris bus notices a young man with a long neck and a funny hat arguing with another passenger, then sees him later near the Gare Saint-Lazare being told to add a button to his coat. Each version uses a different style: as a sonnet, a legal report, a series of exclamations, in slang or in dog Latin. The experiment shows how much form shapes meaning and how elastic language is.

It is for readers who love language games, writers looking for ideas and fans of the Oulipo movement. You can read a few versions at a time, and it is one of the funniest books about style.

Deep and open-ended; a moderate read.

Best for readers like The Deep Diver. Which reader are you?