Andy Pressman reviewed Exercises In Style by Raymond Queneau
A favorite formal experiment
4 stars
The same banal story — a person gets on a bus, witnesses a fight, sees one of the participants later that day — repeatedly told using different stylistic forms. Past tense, future tense, haiku, free verse, rhyming slang, "permutations by Groups of 2, 3, 4, and 5 letters," etc. It's fun! And an excellent gift for any young writer, designer, game maker, etc.
This is listed with a recent pub date, but the original text is from 1947, with the English edition translated by Barbara Wright in 1958. New exercises, most by the original author, were added in 2013.
The same banal story — a person gets on a bus, witnesses a fight, sees one of the participants later that day — repeatedly told using different stylistic forms. Past tense, future tense, haiku, free verse, rhyming slang, "permutations by Groups of 2, 3, 4, and 5 letters," etc. It's fun! And an excellent gift for any young writer, designer, game maker, etc.
This is listed with a recent pub date, but the original text is from 1947, with the English edition translated by Barbara Wright in 1958. New exercises, most by the original author, were added in 2013.
