Letters, numbers, forms

"Compiled from two volumes of Raymond Queneau's essays [Batons, chiffres et lettres and Le Voyage en Grece), these selections find Queneau at his most playful and at his most serious, eloquently pleading for a certain classicism even as he reveals the roots of his own wildly original oeuvre. Ranging from the funny to the furious, they follow Queneau from modernism to postmodernism by way of countless captivating detours, including his thoughts on language, literary fashions, myth, politics, poetry, and other writers, such as William Faulkner, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, and Marcel…