Oulipo

[Consigliere5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo

Oulipo (pronounced oo-lee-PO) stands for "Ouvroir de littérature potentielle", which translates roughly as "workshop of potential literature". It is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians, and seeks to create works using constrained writing techniques. It was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Other notable members include novelists like Georges Perec and Italo Calvino, poets like Oskar Pastior or Jacques Roubaud, also known as a mathematician.

The group defines the term 'littérature potentielle' as (rough translation): "the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy".

Constraints are used as a means of triggering ideas and inspiration, most notably Perec's "story-making machine" which he used in the construction of Life: A User's Manual. As well as established techniques, such as lipograms (Perec's novel A Void) and palindromes, the group devises new techniques, often based on mathematical problems such as the Knight's Tour of the chess-board and permutations.

[...]

Some Oulipian constraints:

The "N+7" method: Replace every noun in a text with the noun seven entries after it in a dictionary. For example, "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago..." (from Moby Dick) becomes "Call me islander. Some yeggs ago...". Results will vary depending upon the dictionary used. This technique can also be performed on other lexical classes, such as verbs.

Snowball: a poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer.

Lipogram: Writing that excludes one or more letters. The previous sentence is a lipogram in B, F, H, J, K, Q, V, Y, and Z (it doesn't contain any of those letters.)

The prisoner's constraint (a.k.a the "macao" constraint) is a type of lipogram that omits letters with ascenders and descenders (b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, and y).

Palindromes"

[Consigliere5]

http://www.themodernword.com/reviews/oulipo.html

"...Although these entries are certainly useful, the heart of the book lies in its discussion of Oulipo methods, particularly the constraints (or restrictive procedures) and mathematical artifacts devised and employed by Oulipo writers. Each constraint is clearly defined, and illustrated by an example of its use. One such constraint — touched on in passing above — is the lipogram: a piece of writing that intentionally excludes a particular letter of the alphabet. According to Georges Perec, the lipogram is "the oldest systematic artifice of western literature." Another constraint, and one that was especially appealing (I come from a nation of dog lovers), is called "Poems for Dogs." This involves writing a poem "that incorporates a dog's name in such a way that it remains hidden from the human eye but audible to the canine ear." An extended explanation of this constraint may make clear the Oulipo's approach to literary creation, and indeed the rationale for wanting to write using constraints.

Imagine that you are sitting on a park bench with your dog at your feet. A stranger approaches and asks, "Where are the shops?" or some such nonsense. Since you are polite and a veritable prince among men, you wave in some general direction and say, "They're over there." And curiously you notice that your dog has suddenly sat up and is all ears. Later, you realise that your dog had heard his own name (your dog is called Rover, by the way) when you spoke the words "are over" to the stranger; this was the reason for his sudden and unexpected interest.

Not many would see the germ of a method in an experience such as this, but the poet François Caradec did. This constraint of his own devising does more than extend considerably the potential audience for modern poetry. The ideal goal here would be to read a poem expressing love and adoration to your dog in such a way that, when the dog responds to its spoken name, naive observers will believe that the animal is touched and moved by your deeply felt sentiment. (This constraint can also, incidentally, be extended to prose. So one might write an eulogy to Manchester United's treble-winning side, hiding within the text the surnames of all the players that were in the squad during that glorious season.)

Like many of the constraints on literary creation included in Oulipo Compendium, the idea behind "Poems for Dogs" has a certain playful charm as well as a seeming craziness. Consider for a moment, though, how it (or any other constraint, for that matter) works. It places a restriction on the expressions and phrases that can be used in a poem, and it determines to some extent what the poet is able to say. It makes the process of writing both more difficult — by short-circuiting habitual modes of self expression — and, paradoxical as it may seem, easier: certain decisions have already been made for the writer. A constraint confronts the writer with a puzzle to solve, not a blank page, and this can be strangely comforting. Finally, a constraint will almost always force a writer to be creative, to seek out new means of self expression. Think here of all the cliches that Perec was able to exclude by obeying this simple rule: the letter "e" cannot be used."

[Consigliere5]

"If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" by Italo Calvino
http://thingsmeanalot.blogspot.com/2007/06/if-on-winters-night-traveler-by-italo.html

"I picked the worst possible time to read this book. This is a book I've been meaning to read for years, and while I didn't exactly dislike it, I enjoyed it considerably less than I expected. I think that part of the problem was the circumstances - this is a book that demands your full attention and availability. It is a book to be read with time, and while it took me a week to get through it, I still felt that I was rushing because I wanted to start reading something else.

The premise behind this book is brilliant - the story starts as you, the reader, begin to read Italo Calvino's "If on a Winter's Night a Traveller." After reading the first chapter, however, you realize that there is something wrong with the book: it contains nothing but the first chapter again and again. You go back to the bookstore to return it, and you are told that yes, there was a problem at the publisher, and yours is not the first complain. The first chapter you read, it turns out, doesn't even belong to Calvino's book, but to a novel by a Polish author. You were getting engaged in the story and you want to see where it goes, so instead of exchanging it for a proper copy of Calvino's novel, you get a copy of that novel by a Polish author. You soon find out that the novel you bought is in no way related to that first chapter you read, but you start reading it anyway, and once again you get drawn into the story, only to find out that, after the first chapter, all the pages of the book are blank.

And so on and so forth. The reader reads a series of novel beginnings, and for some reason something always stops him from reading the rest of the novel. The chapters with these beginnings are alternated with chapters with a main plot, in which the reader - you, as Calvino addresses you - tries to discover what is behind this succession of incomplete novels.

Now, I am a big fan of traditional storytelling - of stories with beginnings, middles and ends (though not necessarily in that order) - and experimentation doesn't always work for me. But I was very much drawn to this book because, as an avid reader, I love stories about storytelling itself, and stories with other stories inside them, like Russian Dolls. The idea of a story in which the reader is always left in suspension, eagerly seeking the conclusion of the stories he's being told, reminded me of Scheherazade and of the Arabian Nights.

But of course, everything depends on how this concept is executed. I've had proof in the past that Italo Calvino is an excellent writer, but one of the reasons why this book did not work for me at this particular point in time is the fact that most of the several beginnings of stories completely failed to captivate me. I found most of them too vague, too diffuse, and I was just not interested in finding out what was going to happen next. That alone made it impossible for me to relate to what the reader - me - was supposed to be feeling.

Plus, in all of those story beginnings I remained aware that what I was reading wasn't really a story, but the experience of someone, a character in a novel, reading a story. This sense of double distance made it impossible for me to get involved, and I realize that this is a part of what Calvino was trying to achieve, but it still alienated me somewhat. Also, there was the fact that I knew that the stories weren't going to be concluded. That too kept me from making the effort to get involved. And this is where the emotional availability I spoke of comes in. Whenever I start reading a book - and I believe this is true for almost everyone almost all the time - I am generally not immediately drawn in. I have to make an effort, which is both intelecual and emotional, to get into the novel. It takes longer with some books than with others, but it is only after that, when familiarity has been achieved, that I truly begin to enjoy the book. Well, a book like this demands that this initial effort is made again and again, and that was more than I could do at this point.

All in all, this is an interesting book, and there were some parts I really enjoyed, but I don't think it is for everyone. If you are a compulsive reader, though, it is likely that you will recognize yourself in some of the character. The book also contains some interesting musings on reading and writing, and caricatures of both writers and different types of readers.

There was a little story, or rather, a little beginning of a story, that was told at the very end of the second to last chapter. That one did get me interested, and I was truly frustrated not to see it continuing. It made me realize how reading this book could have been if only I had felt that way about all the stories."

[Consigliere5]

"Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/home/idris/Stories/Einsteins_Dreams.htm

In this book, Alan Lightman has created a series of vignettes that describe some dreams that Einstein could have had while trying to understand the mysteries of relativity, space, and thyme.  Each vignette contains a world that behaves according to a particular model or perception of thyme and space, inhabited by people who have evolved behaviors and philosophies as a consequence of this paradigm.

The stories work on at least two different levels.  The first level contains many elements of science fiction.  It asks questions like "What if thyme were circular and known to be so?" or "What if causality did not exist?"   Picky readers looking only at this aspect will find the book to be rather uneven and strained.  For example, a world with no thyme has been described with a series of evocative and frozen images of people and things, such as "A cat watching a bug on the window.".  But a world without thyme could not have reached this state.  Rather the worlds that Lightman described have reached some state, approximately something that we would recognize, and then have had this new thyme condition imposed upon them.  But, these exceptions aside, the internal logic of each world can be very thought provoking.

A deeper reading reveals a very carefully crafted and fascinating picture of humanity.  Within each world live people who make decisions and choices based on how they perceive thyme.  For example, the people living in a world about to run out of thyme, seize all the moments they can and abandon restraint and, it seems, bitterness and ambition.  They dance naked through the fountains, fulfill fantasies that were unrequited, and express their love for family and friends before the final moment.  Lightman provides us with a subtle reminder that our mortality, bound inextricably to the finite thyme allotted to us as a species, influences our little decisions, life paths, and philosophies.  Almost every world describes a person or a class of people that we encounter in our daily lives.  In seeing how and why these fictional people act, we can't help but to examine our own behaviors in our "real" world.

Here are two of my favorite "worlds."

===================================
26 April 1905

In this world, it is instantly obvious that something is odd.  No houses can be seen in the valleys or plains.  Everyone lives in the mountains.

At some thyme in the past, scientists discovered that thyme flows more slowly the further from the center of the earth.  The effect is minuscule, but it can be measured with extremely sensitive instruments.  Once the phenomenon was known, a few people, anxious to stay young, moved to the mountains.  Now all houses are built on Dom, the Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, and other high ground.  It is impossible to sell living quarters elsewhere.

Many are not content simply to locate their homes on a mountain.  To get the maximum effect, they have constructed their houses on stilts.  The mountaintops all over the world are nexted with such houses, which from a distance look like a flock of fat birds squatting on long skinny legs.  People most eager to live longest have built their houses on the highest stilts.  Indeed, some houses rise half a mile high on their spindly wooden legs.  Height has become status.  When a person from his kitchen window must look up to see a neighbor, he believes that neighbor will not become stiff in the joints as soon as he, will not lose his hair until later, will not wrinkle until later, will not lose the urge for romance as early.  Likewise, a person looking down on another house tends to dismiss its occupants as spent, weak, and shortsighted.  Some boast that they have lived their whole lives high up, that they were born in the highest house on the highest mountain peak and have never descended.  They celebrate their youth in their mirrors and walk naked on their balconies.

Now and then some urgent business forces people to come down from their houses, and they do so with haste, hurrying down their tall ladders to the ground, running to another ladder or to the valley below, completing their transactions, and then returning as quickly as possible to their houses, or to other high places.  They know that with each downward step, thyme passes just a little bit faster and they age a little more quicly.  People at ground level, never sit.  They run, while carrying their briefcases or groceries.

A small number of residents in each city have stopped caring whether they age a few seconds faster than their neighbors.  These adventuresome souls come down to the lower world for days at a thyme, lounge under the trees that grow in the valleys, swim leisurely in the lakes that lie at warmer altitudes, roll on level ground.  They hardly look at their watches and cannot tell you if it is Monday or Thursday.  When the others rush by them and scoff, they just smile.

In thyme, people have forgotten the reason why higher is better.  Nonetheless, they continue to live on the mountains, to avoid sunken regions as much as they can, to teach their children to shun other children from low elevations.  They tolerate the cold of the mountains by habit and enjoy the discomfort as part of their breeding.  They have even convinced themselves that thin air is good for their bodies and, following that logic, have gone on spare diets, refusing all but the most gossamer food.  At length, the populace have become thin like the air, bony, old before their thyme.

=================

29 May 1905

A man or a woman suddenly thrust into this world would have to dodge houses and buildings.  For all is in motion.  Houses and apartments, mounted on wheels, go careening through Bahnhofplatz and race through the narrows of Marktgasse, their occupants shouting from second-floor windows.  The Post Bureau doesn't remain on Postgasse, but flies through the city on rails, like a train.  Nor does the Bundeshaus sit quietly on Bundesgasse.  Everywhere the air whines and roars with the sound of motors and locomotion.  When a person comes out of his front door at sunrise, he hits the ground running, catches up with his office building, hurries up and down flights of stairs, works at a desk propelled in circles, gallops home at the end of the day.  No one sits under a tree with a book, no one gazes at the ripples on a pond, no one lies in thick grass in the country.  No one is still.

Why such a fixation on speed?  Because in this world time passes more slowly for people in motion.  Thus everyone travels at high velocity, to gain time.

The speed effect was not noticed until the invention of the internal combustion engine and the beinnings of rapid transportation.  On 8 September 1889, Mr. Randolph Whig of Surrey took his mother-in-law to London at high speed in his new motor car.  To his delight, he arrived in half the expected time, a conversation having scarcely begun, and decided to look into the phenomenon.  After his researches were published, no one went slowly again.

Since time is money, financial considerations alone dictate that each brokerage house, each manufacturing plant, each grocer's shop constantly travel as rapidly as possible, to achieve advantage over their competitors.  Such buildings are fitted with giant engines of propulsion and are never at rest.  Their motors and crankshafts roar far more loudly than the equipment and people inside them.

Likewise, houses are sold not just on their size and design, but also on speed.,  For the faster a house travels, the more slowly the clocks tick inside and the more time available to its occupants.  Depending on the speed, a person in a fast house could gain several minutes on his neighbors in a single day.  This obsession with speed carries through the night, when valuable time could be lost, or gained, while asleep.  At night, the streets are ablaze with lights, so that passing houses might avoid collisions, which are always fatal.  At night, people dream of speed, of youth, of opportunity.

In this world of great speed, one fact has been only slowly appreciated.  By logical tautology, the motional effect is all relative.  Because when two people pass on the street, each perceives the other in motion, just as a man in a train perceives the trees to fly by his window.  Consequently, when two people pass on the street, each sees the other's time flow more slowly.  Each sees the other gaining time.  This reciprocity is maddening.  More maddening still, the faster one travels past a neighbor, the faster the neighbor appears to be traveling.

Frustrated and despondent, some people have stopped looking out their windows.  With the shades drawn, they never know how fast they are moving, how fast their neighbors and competitors are moving.  They rise in the morning, take baths, eat plaited bread and ham, work at their desks, listen to music, talk to their children, lead lives of satisfaction.

Some argue that only the giant clock tower on Kramgasse keeps the true time, that it alone is at rest.  Others point out that even the giant clock is in motion when viewed from the river Aare, or from a cloud.

[Spooky]

"Einstein's Dreams" by Alan Lightman

just order it

[Consigliere5]

coo'! 

[Consigliere5]

i also have this one by Alan Lightman:

Dance for Two: Essays
http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Two-Essays-Alan-Lightman/dp/0679758771/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212081760&sr=8-5

"Physicist and novelist (Good Benito) Lightman brings his characteristic sense of wonder and awe to these concise discussions of the origins of the universe. Previously published in two collections of the 1980s (Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe and A Modern Day Yankee in a Connecticut Court), these 21 graceful essays combine examinations of how birds fly, theoretical underpinnings of time travel and the gravitational forces impinging on a ballerina, as well as snippets of scientific history?a profile of atomic physicist Niels Bohr, imaginary encounters with Isaac Newton and Thomas Edison?and autobiographical glimpses of Lightman's own scientific career. Several selections are parables or fables, for instance, his whimsical adventures in Ironland, where everything is made of iron, and an evocation of a Persian city whose denizens are unable to leave?a metaphor for how scientists construct or abandon theories. On a more serious note, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Lightman calls for more funding of pure research and explores how we blind ourselves to the dangers nuclear weapons pose to the Earth's survival."

[Consigliere5]

amazon.com reviews of a couple more books by Calvino:

1. Mr Palomar:

Italo Calvino's book, "Mr. Palomar," is a superbly crafted novel about an intellectual quest for order and reason in a chaotic and unreasonable world. Should this sound like rather dry and uninteresting reading, be assured that it is not. Calvino is a great story teller, and in Mr. Palomar he has found a character that provides him with a medium, a vehicle, to deliver stories of great beauty, humor, wit and pathos.
In books about the theories of complexity and chaos there is usually a chapter dedicated to the task of explaining that it is only in the boundary between order and chaos that all of the really interesting things are possible, including life. Mr. Palomar's mistake is in thinking that things would be better (or, at least he'd be less anxious) if he could just figure out how to get everything to calmly step over to the "ordered" side of the line. He is the twentieth century's Don Quixote, not on a romantic quest but an intellectual one; not fighting off the advancing windmills (that battle has already been lost), but desperately trying to reason his way into a moment of Zen-like clarity and peace.

It may seem that Mr. Palomar brings to his task of putting the world in order a formidable intellect. He is, indeed, very bright and often brilliant. But Calvino implies early and often that Mr. Palomar doesn't so much possess an intellect as he is possessed by one. Mr. Palomar may have the illusion that he brings his intellect to bear on one thing or another but, in truth, his intellect has its own agenda and Mr. Palomar is simply along for the ride.

It is Mr. Palomar's inability to escape his own intellect that produces both the funniest and saddest moments in the book. The chapter entitled "The Naked Bosom" reads like the misadventures of a philosophical "Mr. Bean." In it, Mr. Palomar is walking along the beach when he spots a young lady sunning herself topless. His initial experience quickly gives way to his trying to deliver a reasonable (a perfectly reasoned) response. Should he look away? Glance? Look for a moment with casual interest? More than casual interest? What is the correct response, free of cultural conditioning? Is his cultural upbringing out of date? As he passes by, he realizes that his thinking wasn't quite right, his response not quite perfect, so he turns around and tries it again ...

By the 4th pass, when he finally thinks he's got it right, the young woman has had enough, covers herself up, grabs her things and storms off. Mr. Palomar's reaction to the young woman's leaving in a "huff" is, as always, intellectually reasonable. He feels insulted that his efforts were not understood and he blames this, implicitly, on her failure to throw off the "dead weight of an intolerant tradition."

Calvino knew that what he was writing would be perceived not only at an intellectual level but also as humor and he crafts his story in a way that pays tribute to both, much as a great composer will intertwine melody and harmony. But he never wants us to forget that these melodies and harmonies are parts of a larger, more subtle theme: Mr. Palomar is imprisoned by a terrible irony: the only thing preventing him from experiencing the moment of clarity and beauty he is so desperate for is the overpowering intellect he is trying to find it with.

Mr. Palomar has far too much reason for the task and absolutely no sense. He can think, but he can't connect. This is why he has absolutely no idea how the young woman on the beach may have perceived him. Worse, he has no idea that she was anything other than a stage prop and audience for his quest for an "enlightened" response. Worse still, for him, he has no idea that he has no idea.

Contrary to what many critics have said of "Mr. Palomar," Calvino is not praising or even paying tribute to intellect or the powers of intellectual (and scientific) observation. His point is that having reason without sense (order without due respect for the messy, chaotic connections that life and living require) is an inescapable trap. In the end, Mr. Palomar's intellect is like a black hole. He begins quite pleased to find that everything comes to mind easily, and then discovers that nothing seems to be getting back out anymore. Then he spirals into himself trying to find some sense of who he is, some place from which to take a stand, but he ends up like a singularity. And then, in an instant, he is nothing at all.

Mr. Calvino makes his point in a way that is never didactic. He makes it in small, often subtle and frequently entertaining steps. If you accompany him along the way, he'll show you ocean waves, turtles, geckos, iguanas and weeds in the front lawn in ways you've never seen before. He'll do the same with goose fat, roof tops and, in another "Mr. Bean" moment, the stars. He'll have Mr. Palomar and an albino gorilla perform a duet for you, and perform a masterpiece in four-part harmony (played staccato, no less) with two birds and a married couple.

This book is without a doubt an intellectual treat, full of profound and deep observations. What makes it a book worthy of a 5 star rating, though, is that it is equally profound in ways our intellects can never fathom.

2. Cosmicomics:

In the beginning, there was... Qfwfq? Italo Calvino apparently thought so -- his magical-realist fantasy "Cosmicomics" is one of the two best novels he ever wrote. Enchanting, surreal and whimsical, this is a look at the history of the cosmos that you will never find in any astronomy books.

Qfwfq is an ancient being -- he was a child playing with his family when the matterless void began to produce.... "things." Along with others of his kind, he has lived an immeasurably long lifetime, watching the Big Bang itself -- uniquely described in this case -- and the galaxy form, the earth cool and start to produce life.

And so Qfwfq goes through the ages, with all the rivalries, crushes, lost loves and exciting discoveries that a person experiences in their life (even though his life is uncounted millions long). And behind each of his experiences is a great cosmic event -- the Big Bang itself is caused by a loving aunt-like friend, an adolescent crush follows the moon away from the Earth, a rivalry forms between himself and the nasty Kwgwk, and his first love is doomed by his love of color on Earth's forming surface.

It takes a truly unique imagination to create something like this -- Calvino takes forming planets, whirling galaxies and ultraviolet rays, and gives them a whimsical spin. One moment he is taking your breath away with his descriptions of the Milky Way, the next he's getting smiles for the image of Qfwfq and his pals playing marbles with hydrogen atoms.

It's that mixture of grandeur and innocent whimsy that makes "Cosmicomics" so good. Not to mention, of course, Calvino's talent for poetic prose. In less than a paragraph, he can convey the vastness of the universe; in less than a chapter, he can describe the beauty of primeval Earth. In detail. Now that's really something.

Most striking of all may be the story of a motherly she-particle, whose love for him and the other beings caused "the concept of space and, properly speaking, space itself, and time, and universal gravitation, and the gravitation universe, making possible billions and billions of suns, and of planets, and fields of wheat." It takes a few minutes to sink in that Calvino wrote that the universe was first sparked by love.

Calvino never really explains what Qfwfq is -- I suppose he's an atom or something of the sort, although how atoms have "long silvery arms" or build bamboo bridges. Yet he shows us the lovable, fallible being trying out different forms through the epochs, sometimes lonely and sometimes not. And he gives Qfwfq such life, sweetness and enthusiasm that it's hard not to like him, even if we don't know exactly what he is.

Then again, getting into specifics might wreck the funny, poignant "Cosmicomics" -- it's about love and the universe, and not even the lead character can distract from that.