Raymond Queneau

Exercises in Style, written by Raymond Queneau, is a collection of 99 retellings of the same story, each in a different style. In each, the narrator gets on the "S" bus, witnesses an altercation between a man with a long neck and funny hat and another passenger, and then sees the same person two hours later at the …

Only a pataphysician nurtured lovingly on surrealist excess could have come up with The Blue Flowers, Queneau's 1964 novel. At his death in 1976, Raymond Queneau was one of France's most eminent men of letters––novelist, poet, essayist, editor, scientist, mathematician, and, more to the point, pataphysician. And only …