Have you ever heard of Raymond Queneau?

I hadn't before I picked up Exercises in Style. In it, he tells a simple story of a 26-year-old man in a hat who gets onto a bus, is caught in a commotion, and disappears only to be discovered later by the narrator, talking about a button with a friend.

The story isn't expanded upon. It's left there, for the most part - what makes this book such a conversation piece is the fact that the story is told 99 different ways.

Queneau (1903-1976) was a Frenchman who worked at the French publishing firm Gallimard before becoming an author. Fascinated by surrealism, Queneau also worked for a Paris newspaper, was heavily involved in the cinema, and co-founded the Oulipo, or Workshop of Potential Literature. As an author, he produced many novels, essays, and poems which are read today as both characteristically experimental and curious.

In his most well known book, Exercises in Style, Queneau starts off with an explanation (in notation form) of the aforementioned incident involving the man on the bus. He continues to re-explain the incident in every plain, crazy, bizarre and hilarious way possible. For example:

Negatives
It was neither a boat, nor an aeroplane, but a terrestrial means of transport. It was neither the morning, nor the evening, but midday. It was neither a baby, nor an old man, but a young man. It was neither a ribbon, nor a string, but a plaited cord. It was neither a procession, nor a brawl, but a scuffle. It was neither a pleasant person, nor an evil person, but a bad-tempered person. It was neither a standing person, nor a recumbent person, but a would-be-seated person.

It was neither the day before, nor the day after, but the same day. It was neither the gare de Nord, nor the gard-du-P.L.M. but the gare Saint-Lazare. It was neither a relation, nor a stranger, but a friend. It was neither insult, nor ridicule, but sartorial advice.

...Or, how about this:

Onomatopoeia
On the platform, pla pla pla, of a bus, chuff chuff chuff, which was an S (and singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest), it was about noon, ding dang dong, ding dang dong, a ridiculous ephebus, poof poof, who had one of those hats, pooh, suddenly turned (twirl twirl) on his neighbor angrilly, grrh grrh, and said, hm hm: "You are purposely jostling me, Sir," Ha ha. Whereupon, phfftt, he threw himself on to a free seat and sat down, plonk.

That same day, a bit later, ding dang dong, ding dang dong, I was him again in the company of another ephebus, poof poof, who was talking overcoat buttons. (boorra boorra, it wasn't as warm as all that...)

Ha ha.

Here's just one more...

Haiku
Summer S long neck
plait hat toes abuse retreat
station button friend

Get it? It's a bizarre book. If you think that seeing passages akin to the ones I've just shown you 99 times will make you want to jump off the roof of your home or place of business, don't open this book. However, if you're fascinated by the nuances of writing and/or could use help with the big stuff (i.e. in the aforementioned examples, a budding author could gain assistance in the usage of negatives, onomatopoeia and haiku form in his or her writing) do yourself a favor and find a copy of this 200-page guidebook in your local bookstore or library.

Several other examples of devices Queneau uses to get his story across are permutations, different tenses, different narrators, different moods, and off-the-wall zany things like 'Dog Latin,' spoonerisms, rhyming slang and even a musical ode.

Oh, and don't be scared by the fact that the book is peppered with bizarre drawings of blandly-shaped naked people, the way my classmates were.

Recommended: Yes