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Exercises in Style
Translated by Barbara Wright
ISBN: 9781847492418
128 pages
RRP: Original price was: £7.99.£6.39Current price is: £6.39.
FOREWORD BY UMBERTO ECO WITH AN ESSAY BY ITALO CALVINO
On a crowded bus at midday, the narrator observes one man accusing another of jostling him deliberately. When a seat is vacated, the first man takes it. Later, in another part of town, the man is spotted again, while being advised by a friend to have another button sewn onto his overcoat.
Exercises in Style retells this apparently unremarkable tale ninety-nine times, employing a variety of styles, ranging from sonnet to cockney to mathematical formula. Too funny to be merely a pedantic thesis, this virtuoso set of themes and variations is a linguistic rustremover, a guide to literary forms and a demonstration of imagery and inventiveness.
Part of The Raymond Queneau Collection now at £25
Also part of Essential French Masterpieces (Now at £25)
REVIEWS
A pointless anecdote told in 99 different ways, or a work of genius in a brilliant translation by Barbara Wright. In fact it’s both. Endlessly fascinating and very funny.
Philip Pullman
Witty, playful, ingenious, it manages to transcend its own sophistication by a sort of verbal slapstick which Miss Wright translated into pure Groucho Marxism.
The Guardian
I’ve loved Exercises in Style for years. This translation is impeccable, extraordinary.
Philip Pullman
Midway between Lewis Carroll and Jacques Derrida, in a deliriously witty dimension of its own, lies Queneau's Exercises in Style … Barbara Wright's dazzling translation matches this oddball classic step by step, pun by pun.
The Independent
