Many subtle channels [electronic resource] : in praise of potential literature / Daniel Levin Becker.
2012
PQ22.O8 B35 2012eb
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Title
Many subtle channels [electronic resource] : in praise of potential literature / Daniel Levin Becker.
Author
Levin Becker, Daniel.
ISBN
9780674065277 electronic book
0674065778
9780674065772
0674065778
9780674065772
Imprint
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2012.
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (x, 338 p.)
Call Number
PQ22.O8 B35 2012eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
840.9/11
Summary
What sort of society could bind together Jacques Roubaud, Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp, and Raymond Queneau-and Daniel Levin Becker, a young American obsessed with language play? Only the Oulipo, the Paris-based experimental collective founded in 1960 and fated to become one of literature's quirkiest movements. An international organization of writers, artists, and scientists who embrace formal and procedural constraints to achieve literature's possibilities, the Oulipo (the French acronym stands for 0workshop for potential literature0) is perhaps best known as the cradle of Georges Perec's novel A Void, which does not contain the letter e. Drawn to the Oulipo's mystique, Levin Becker secured a Fulbright grant to study the organization and traveled to Paris. He was eventually offered membership, becoming only the second American to be admitted to the group. From the perspective of a young initiate, the Oulipians and their projects are at once bizarre and utterly compelling. Levin Becker's love for games, puzzles, and language play is infectious, calling to mind Elif Batuman's delight in Russian literature in The Possessed. In recent years, the Oulipo has inspired the creation of numerous other collectives: the OuMuPo (a collective of DJs), the OuMaPo (marionette players), the OuBaPo (comic strip artists), the OuFlarfPo (poets who generate poetry with the aid of search engines), and a menagerie of other Ou-X-Pos (workshops for potential something). Levin Becker discusses these and other intriguing developments in this history and personal appreciation of an iconic-and iconoclastic-group.
Note
Includes index.
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Many subtle channels.
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Table of Contents
I: Present. A library burning ; Reading out loud ; Little demons of subtlety ; Get it in writing
II: Past. Let there be limit ; Imaginary solutions ; The rat in laboratory ; Publish and perish
III: Future. Packrats who build the library ; Safety in letters ; Potential weaving ; Questions and answers.
II: Past. Let there be limit ; Imaginary solutions ; The rat in laboratory ; Publish and perish
III: Future. Packrats who build the library ; Safety in letters ; Potential weaving ; Questions and answers.