UOTHEQUE OUUPIENNE 37
)CARAD£C REGULAR OR DECAF!
OFrancois Caradec Regular or Decaf? CHAPTER XXXVII
What am I going to say? Where do I start? When shall we three meet again? Don't you remember? Do you believe in reincarnation? Who are you? Is this the object, end and law and purpose of our being here? Chi fa so! Is that you, grandpa? Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? Where am I? What time is it? Ah, why wilt thou affright a feeble soul? Why are you telling me this? Why not? What's that awful smell? The flea market? Sewage farms? Or, simply put, the garbage can? Can't you believe me just once, mother, while you're still around? What's this all about? What do you think? What's up? Quid novi? Why warum? Do you know just how late it is? What's it look like to you? What happened to my slippers?
What'll we have? What boots the enquiry? Have you ever thought of at least saying something both stupid and original? Why rub it in? Can't you say anything? What is death? What is the word death} What is the word word) What is the word homo? What do / know? But is it art? Or smut? Ah, did you once see Shelley plain? What are you waiting for? Does the accused have anything more to say in his defence? Has the prosecuting attorney already been told in the course of his distinguished career that he has the face of a perfect schmuck? Of what? What's that? Hello? How can you take him seriously? Can you beat that? What orchid? Don't you ever read the newspapers? It's true, isn't it? How is it, shadows, that I knew thee not? But how does it work? What was it made them thus exempt from care? Didn't I explain that already? What did they say? Do I have to draw you a picture? Anything else, madam? Would you care to have it wrapped? Do you think at your age it is right? Where are the songs of spring, ay, where are they? Of two such lessons, why forget the nobler and the manlier one? Can we give him the works, boss? Has he no friend, no loving mother near? What happened to you? Why are you doing your best to destroy yourself? Why don't you take a bath? Why make things simple when you can make them complicated?
81
BI6LIOIHEQUE OULIPIENNE 37
3CARADEC RECUUR OR DECAF?
What did I do? What am I doing here? Where do we go from here? Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest, thy beauty's shield, heart-shap'd and vermeil dyed? Who do I have to fuck to get out of this place? Who was that beautiful woman I saw you with? How can you say that? But who will rid me of this insolent priest? Is the weather always like this? Whom have I die honour? What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones? And must thy lyre, so long divine, degenerate into hands like mine? What's the weather like in London? Why are you doing that? What's your business? What business is that of yours? Did he who made the lamb make thee? What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening? Who put the overalls in Mrs, Murphy's chowder? Why don't you look it up? Where did he go? Jesus Christ, who was that guy? And what manner of man art. thou? What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? What seems to be the problem, officer? What's going on? Do I make myself clear? Do you have anything to declare? Which way to the train station? Taxi, are you free?
What's the matter? How old are you? And what is love? How much is that? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? But where are the snows of yesteryear? What ever happened to Baby Jane? Why don't you get to the point? If you're so smart, why don't you figure it out? Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? Does truth sound bitter as one at first believes? Shall I part my hair behind? Will the weevil delay? What's the name of this schlemiel? Is that really necessary? Do you absolutely insist on climbing that ladder? Haven't you got a grain of sense in your head? What's the greatest engineering feat ever performed? What's the point of it all? Can it get any better than this? If winter comes, can spring be far behind? What is the point? What was the colour of George Washington's white horse? Death, where is thy sting? Do you actually trust doctors? Why does a chicken cross the road? When is a door not a door? And when the sun set, where were they? Who actually wrote that? Do I wake or sleep?
[HMI12
82
DTHEQUE OULIPIENNE 54
BOS4 JCARADEC CHRISTMAS
10. Example of an eclipse. Harry Mathews's triple eclipse ■porates •Roubaud's First Principle, according to which a t written according to an Oulipian procedure refers to the
Jure:
The principle governing the procedure known as N + s respected by replacing each noun in a given text with ■■other one found by counting seven nouns down in a ■iously chosen lexicon; and the priority governing the >curer known as N + 7 is respected by replacing each in a given theme with another one found by counting nubs down in a previously chosen liberator. Why id we be restricted to the confessions of our termined likings? Why should we be restricted to the nes of our predetermined limitations? Let's nourish
• outgrowths. Lets nourish our outlooks.
11. 5/Z. The title, taken by Jacques Roubaud from Roland hes's well-known essay on Balzac's Sarrazine, indicates his ?l application of the N + 7 method: the replacement of a
by the 7th following it alphabetically. 5 becomes z in a writing of Gerard de Nerval's most famous poem. El Desdichado [El Dezdichado).
The results of applying this procedure to a sonnet by Wordsworth recall William Barnes's poems in Dorset dialect:
Earth haz not anything to zhow more fain Dull would be he of zoul who could pazz by A zight zo touching in itz majezty...
• BOSS. The Oullpo, Autres morales el^mentaires (More EJementary Moralities), 1992.
A collection of •elementary moralities {cf. «608) whose regular form is combined with an additional requirement, either syntactic or semantic.
OFrancois Caradec Christmas
What do you want for Christmas, my little one?
I want a transformation with davenports, a tarmac with movable examples, hand-crafted manoeuvres, patrimony candour, a dither, a hiatus, larceny snipes, rubbish (made of widowhood, of course), a throb-hunting hold-Speak a little more slowly. I don't understand you.
I want a translation with deacons, a task with movable excerpts, hand-crafted manifesros, a pattern cannonade, a dividend, a highbrow, larynx snorkels, a rug (made of willow, of course), a thrush-hunting hollyhock!
Thrush hunting is cruel. Are you sure you want all that?
I want transportation with debaucheries, a taunt with movable exponents, hand-crafted manservants, a paw canter, a divorce, a hill, lather snubs, a rumour (made of wing, of course), a thyroid-hunting homicide.
Make up your mind — you keep changing it all the time.
I want a trauma with decades, a teacup with movable expressions, hand-crafted manufacturers, a peace capacity, a doctorate, a hip, laundry socialists, a running (made of wisdom, of course), a tie-hunting honeysuckle.
Can't you make yourself clearer? Santa Claus will never get all that into your stocking.
I want treacle with decibels, tears with movable extinctions, hand-crafted marches, a peasant caprice, a doe, a hive, lawyer sods, a rustic (made from a wizard, of course), a tiller-hunting humour...
You're too demanding. This year you'll have a tree with decorations, a teddy-bear with movable eyes, hand-crafted marionettes, a pedal car, a doll, a hobby-horse, lead soldiers, a sabre (made of wood, of course), a tin hunting-hoin, and that's all.
Sob, sob! Daddy, you're nothing but a dairy, a damage, a danger, a dastard, a davit!
91
BIBLFOTHEQUE OUL1P1ENNE 55
3JOUET ELEMENTARY MORAUTY
Ojacques Jouet Elementary Morality
shoulder receding breast uncupped arm compressed
veil translucent sheen minute sheen displayed halter unbridled gesture reiterated gesture reiterated
begin
with
this
button
this
with
begin
ribs apparent
lung sheltered curtain parted
shoulder tucked heart audible arm active
g
esture reiterated
[Trans HM]
92
BIBLIOTHEQUE OULIPIENNE 74 OLE TELLIER ALL OUR THOUGHTS
OHerve Le Tellier All Our Thoughts (thefirst few hundred) [Extracts]
1 — I think of you.
16 — 1 think I'm wrong to write my love letters on a computer and print them out. There have been complaints. What do they want me to do? Recopy the text on the screen?
20 — I think that in the lavatory, just before I flush, I can't help looking at the contents of the toilet bowl.
25 — I think the exact shade of your eyes is No. 574 in the Pan tone colour scale.
40 — I think that with a litde bit of imagination its hard to be faithful, but that with a huge amount of imagination it may be possible.
41 — I think that I don't have much imagination. 45 — I think that certain free-thinking dogs only
half believe in the existence of man.
67 — I think that I regret nothing, not even you. Stop, that was meant to be funny.
76 — I think that often I'm sexually attracted to women that I would never dare introduce to my friends.
84 — I think it would have been better if I'd shut
up.
90 — I think that durmg the fifteen seconds spent in an elevator with a pretty woman it is virtually impossible to reveal one's intelligence, charm, and sense of humour.
106 — I think that if I taught drawing, I would have my students draw the Mona Lisa's feet.
113 — I think that with pretty women I try to
seem as intelligent as they are beautiful and that I'll never succeed.
138 — I think that I have never spent an evening with a woman without thinking, even if only for a moment, of another woman.
144 — I think you look like the Mona Lisa. You always seem to be at a window admiring the landscape that is actually behind you.
151 — I think that every time I try to take off my trousers with my shoes on I find myself in a ridiculous situation.
164 — I think that if I had a better sense of humour, life would be even more depressing.
181 — I think that I'd like being a ventriloquist in order to listen to the statues in church.
182 — I think I like brunettes, whatever colour their hair is.
201 — I think that the pretty brunette to whom I was talking about E.M. Forster and who asked "Who?" never realised how much she contributed to my personal stability.
252 — I think that it's fairly true that after love-making the first one who speaks says something stupid.
270 — I think Hitler was at least useful in showing that being fond of dogs doesn't mean anything.
283 — I think that the logic of religious faith is war.
284 — I think one always opens one's mouth when spoon-feeding a baby.
296 — I think that there must be a good reason for the Mona Lisas fame and that I don't know what it is.
[Trans HM]
102
UE OUUP1ENNE 91
LJMATHEWS 35 VARIATIONS
t Mathews 35 Variations on a Theme from Shakespeare (Source text: To be or not to be: that is the question)
01 Alphabetically EEEE HH II NN OOOOO QRSS TTTTTTT U
02 Anagram at his behest: bet on toot or quit
03 Lipogram in c, d, f, g, j, k, 1, m, p, v, w, x, y, z or not to be: that is the question
04 Lipogram in a
or not to be: this is the question
05 Lipogram in i be or not to be: that's the problem
06 Lipogram in e
t nothing, or nothing: but which?
07 Transposition (W + 7) beckon or not to beckon: that is the quinsy
08 Strict palindrome it's (eu) qeht sit. Ah! te botton toebot
09 Missing letter be or not to be hat is the question
10 Two missing litters
To be or not to be at is the question
11 One litter added
~fa bed or not to be: that is the question
12 Negation
To be or not to be: that is not the question
13 Emphasis
To be, if you see what I mean, to be, be alive, exist, not just keep hanging around; or (and that means one or the other, no getting away from it) not to be, not be alive, not exist, to — putting it bluntly — check out, cash in your chips, head west: that (do you read me? not "maybe this" or "maybe something else") that is, really is, irrevocably is, the one and
only inescapable, overwhelming, and totally preoccupying ultimate question
14 Curtailing
Not to be: that is the question
15 Curtailing (different) To be or not to be, that is
16 Double curtailing Not to be, that is
17 Triple contradiction
You call this life? And everything's happening all the time? Who's asking?
18 Another point of view Hamlet, quit stalling!
19 Minimal variations To see or not to see
To flee or not to flee To pee or not to pee
20 Antonymy
Nothing and something: this was an answer
21 Amplification
To live forever or never to have been born is a concern that has perplexed humanity from time immemorial and still does
22 Reductive
One or the other — who knows?
23 Permutation
That is the question: to be or not to be
24 Interference
a) Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow: That is the question
b) To be or not to be
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death
111
B091 OMATHEWS 3S VARIATIONS
BIBLIOTHEQUE OULIPIENNE 92
25 Isomorphisms
Speaking while singing: this defines redtativo Getting and spending we lay waste our powers
26 Synonymous
Choosing between life and death confuses me
27 Subtle insight Shakespeare knew the answer
28 Another interference
Put out the light, and then? That is the question
29 Homoconsonantism
At a bier, a nutty boy, too, heats the queasy tone
30 Homovocalism
Lode of gold ore affirms evening's crown
31 Homophony
Two-beer naughty beat shatters equation
32 Snowball with an irregularity
I
am all
mute
after
seeing
Hamlets
annoying
emergency
yours truly
Shakespeare
33 Heterosyntaxism
I ask myself: is it worth it, or isn't it?
34 In another metre
So should I be, or should I not? This question keeps me on the trot
35 Interrogative mode
Do I really care whether I exist or not?
(We leave the reader saddled with this painful question.)
x is allowed to appear. Furthermore, to keep the work from acquiring excessive length, the total number of words has also been limited to 1,997... Finally, since the words of the title are not included in this count, they have been organised as a second chronogram, one kept as short as possible but, in terms of the sum of the numerical tetters, equivalent to the body of text that follows.
Extract:
January starts: sun here, stars there. So what joys & fears has the New Year brought us?
+ In the Irkutsk penitentiary ironworks the night shift is finishing its stint, skirting weighty pig-iron ingots as it regains the prison interior.
+ In Pienza, Ernestina is heating tripe jiorentina for thirteen.
+ In Sing-Sing, wearing surreptitious attire, Phineas, Bishop of Ossining, is anointing nine Fenian ("Fighting Irish") priests in a kiosk of ingenuous piety.
+ Bibi is shirring pigeon eggs in Saint Erienne.
+ In Whitby, seagoing Einar, finishing his fifteenth pink gin, insists he is quite fine.
+ In Austria, zipping past the Inn, ignoring warning signs, Pippo Peruzzi, first-string Ferrari whiz, big winner in Spain & Argentina, is steering his touring-bike (pistons & turbine whirring, its stunning furnishings genuine Pinin-Farina) in brisk pursuit of fiery Zizi, his Hungarian skier, itinerant antithesis, antagonist, tigress, priestess, siren, obsession, happiness, wife.
+ In Tirana, inept Hussein is paying fifty-eight qintars to fortify his Istrian wine with Bosnian raki.
+ Postponing inopportune issues & putting first things first, Kiwanis, Rotarians, & Shriners are putting their agonizing unity in writing, signing a proposition that reasserts their opposition to atheists, bigotry, euthanasia ("outright assassination"), heroin, pinkos, the Spanish
112
JPEREC TALE
DGeorges Perec Tale
lk all began almost ten years ago. The evening I had been spending with friends in a Brisbane pub was ;to a close when a man seated at the bar came over to our table with a mug of beer in his hand; me, gentlemen. Would you allow me to join you for a moment and tell you my story?" ft silently acquiesced. He sat down, took a sip of his beer, and said:
iy name is Abercrombie Makarenko, I m forty years old, and a real-estate attorney by profession. Bt have been five years ago when a man showed up at my office and requested to speak to me privately, lent later, seated across from me, he began with these words:
"Ezekiel Bridgman-Treyer is my name. About eighteen months ago I found myself in a foreign irnmg to my hotel room one evening, I discovered a man sitting in my bedroom. 'Forgive the ■ffl,' he said, rising to his feet, 'but I have to talk to you.' Curiosity got the better of wariness, and I him to explain. This is what I heard:
" 'Have you ever been to Pauvelle-les-Bains? It's a charming spa not far from Chambery. Last May m there to take a cure, as I do every year. As I was strolling in the park one Sunday afternoon, a young ressed in black approached me and insisted on speaking to me. We sat down on a bench, and he told
L™' " ' "Three weeks ago I travelled to Basle. I shared a compartment with an individual whose face *d curiously familiar. After several commonplace remarks, he asked me to listen to his story. I urgently ged him to do so. Here is what he revealed:
a i it i it f
etc.
[Trans HM]
133
IE, LUC
3QUENEAU & CARELMAN EXERCISES IN STYLE
Other Oulipian works: »B023 & 27.
ises in Style. (Gallimard, 1947) A series of texts by Dfid Queneau in which the same inconsequential story is tin 99 different ways. A later edition (1963) was illustrated by ; Carelman of the BOupeinpo.
^Raymond Queneau & Jacques Carelman Exercises in Style (Extracts)
Narrative
• day at. about midday in the Pare Monceau district, on ■ back platform of a more or less full S bus (now No. R I observed a person with a very long neck who was ig a felt hat which had a plaited cord round it instead r z ribbon. This individual suddenly addressed the man ig next to him, accusing him of purposely treading his toes every time any passengers got on or off. rever he quickly abandoned the dispute and tlirew elf on to a seat which had become vacant. Two hours later I saw him in front of the Gare Saint-re engaged in earnest conversation with a friend who i advising him to reduce the space between the lapels of f overcoat by getting a competent tailor to raise the top mi.
Antiphrasis
ight. It's raining. The buses go by nearly empty. On bonnet of an AI near the Bastille, an old man whose is sunk in his shoulders and who isn't wearing a hat a lady sitting a long way away from him because she [stroking his hands. Then he goes to stand on the knees of I man who is still sitting down.
Two hours earlier, behind the Gare de Lyon, this old i was stopping up his ears so as not to hear a tramp who i refusing to say that he should slighdy lower the bottom button of his underpants.
Blurb 21
In this new novel, executed with his accustomed brio, the famous novelist X, to whom we are already indebted for so many masterpieces, has decided to confine himself to very clear-cut characters who act in an atmosphere which everybody, both adults and children, can understand. The plot revolves, then, round the meeting in a bus of the hero of this story and of a rather enigmatic character who picks a quarrel with the first person he meets. In the final episode we see this mysterious individual listening with the greatest attention to the advice of a friend, a past master of Sartorial Art. The whole makes a charming impression which the novelist X has etched with rare felicity.
Interjections
Psst! h'm! ah.' oh! hem! ah! ha! hey! well! oh! pooh! poof! ow! oo! ouch! hey! eh! h'm! pffft!
Well! hey! pooh.' oh! h'm! right.'
Mathematical
In a rectangular parallelepiped moving along a line representing an integral solution of the second-order differential equation:
y" + PPTB(x)y' + S = 84 two homoids (of which only one, the homoid A, manifests a cylindrical element of length L > N encircled by two sine waves of period K/2 immediately below its crowning hemisphere) cannot suffer point contact at their lower extremities without proceeding upon divergent courses. The oscillation of two homoids tangentially to the above trajectory has as a consequence the small but significant displacement of all significantly small spheres tangential to a perpendicular of length I < L described on the supra-median line of the homoid As shirt-front.
Botanical
After nearly taking root under a heliotrope, T managed to graft myself on to a vernal speedwell where hips and haws
147
GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF TEXT
tpal situation
p
y
-ta'sson   Q   p< 0
Oedipus OrZ+Qt^r?
■ y
Jocasta 6'--*>.+.0
texts, in particular those using •branching systems, [ to grasp without being visualised graphically. Various have been made to schematise the cantos of Roussel's es Impressions d'Afrique: the entry for wRoussel and his includes one; in Lipo (•CP3), Claude Berge and ! Queneau offered these diagrams of Canto I (numbers he line at which parentheses are opened or closed):
.■     m e1inc!ilE.    ..qui bou'l lie s»tell_
also mapped his bifurcating story A Tale of your
In Lipo, Claude Berge proposed writing poems arranged according to a graph without co-circuits (never mind what they are), which allows a user starting from any point to finish at a predetermined point:
looking for [he man
who iw
who spirs in the pitcher
among the statues soft as over-ripe fruits
a pearl-oyster on the plate
must bow down to a caterpillar
no no says the offended lady I'm not
155
GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF TEXT
that devours its vegetable substance the foetus that darkens the night looking for the man who saw the man who spits in the pitcher
The lines of poetry corresponding to the segments of the graph have precise characteristics; those ending at D share the word "man", those starting at D have parallel grammatical structures. The user can assemble texts with fixed starting- and finishing-points, or avoid traversing a segment or crossing a point more than once. An example of the latter: BADC yields, "no no says the offended lady, I'm not looking for the man who spits in the pitcher".
As an anticipatory ©plagiary, here is the famous diagram of digressions from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (for another of its formal innovations see Going for the ■limit):
See also •Eodermdrome, •Multiple-choice narrative, •Multiple-choice theatre, A/us d'Oronge.
■J
156
MACHINES FOR WRITING
for reading. The invention of the first reading » credited to Agostino Ramelli in the sixteenth century; [fc«xJed to facilitate the reading of several books at IjlBwugh this invention
arret "5
appear particularly are certain works fnomplexity seems to pfi such mechanical . Machines have been I to read two specific A of particular interest Ouiipo, and whose imske them difficult to mely Queneau's 1000,000,000 Poems Hfmond *Roussel's fcnpress/ons d'Afri-
Bmnius seems to have been the first to design a reading Nouvelles Impressions (exhibited at the exhibition). Unfortunately neither the machine ph of it survives. Juan Esteban Fassio actually 1a simple reading machine in 1964. His drawings of el issue of Bizarre (34/35, 1964) give an adequate us operandi (see above).
marche
In some respects Nouvelles Impressions anticipates hypertext, and computer technology may well have provided the definitive means: a hypertext English translation is noted in the entry on Roussel and his methods.
The machines constructed in the 1980s by the architect Daniel Libeskind are exemplary. Libeskind constructed three machines, intended to function symbolically as well as mechanically. The first (left, overleaf) was modelled on that of Ramelli and was constructed using entirely medieval methods. The last, a machine Jfor writing architecture", which Libeskind at one point describes as "a contribution to Roussel scholarship",31 was a complex mechanism of 2,662 parts (bottom; the remaining one, a memory machine, is not illustrated); it has provided the elements for the E.T.A. Hoffmann garden outside Libeskind's biggest completed project to date, the Jewish Museum in Serfin. All three machines were destroyed in a gallery fire.
Although early attempts to facilitate the reading of Queneau's sonnet sequence (the book version is difficult to manipulate) centred on computers, a more recent attempt returns to mechanical means. The machine constructed by Jean-Michel Bragard and Robert Kayser (who is fleetingly visible in the main picture overleaf) featured in a plaquette published by Temps Me/es (1994), [AB]
•Machines for writing. In the
broadest sense of the word, every Oulipian technique can be thought of as a writing machine. Several actual devices have attracted the Oulipo's attention, however. See •ALAMO, the •Computer and the Ouiipo, »Llull, •Minutes of the Ouiipo (1), •Roussel; not to mention the machine in Kafka's <r> the Penal Colony, in which writing, punishment, and death are linked in a more literal manner than is customary. [AB]
181
182
OULIPO COMPENDIUM
Revised and Updated
ATLAS PRESS, LONDON
MAKE NOW PRESS, LOS ANGELES