Wednesday, August 15, 2012

 

OuLiPo Novel


In recent days I have been filled with an urge to write an OuLiPo novel. The last thing I need at this stage is to add yet another project to the list of projects I'm working on, but clearly it wants to be written. There's no point trying to resist an urge that feels so inevitable and apt!

Anyway, I already have a title for the novel, Comfy Rascals, and it will be a showcase of OuLiPo techniques, some standard, some devised by myself. I have just planned a section involving word ladders, which is a type of puzzle that seems ideally suited to the logical and linguistic constraints that are the essential basis of all OuLiPo projects. For instance, plot development in most fictional stories relies on the logic of everyday causality, but I intend to use the logic of word association instead, so the characters in this section of the book might encounter the following objects or activities in a strict order imposed by the rules of word ladder construction: Games, Gapes, Capes, Copes, Cores, Corps, Coops, Crops, Cross, Cress, Chess. Constraints like this serve to force the mind to think laterally and break the tendency of an author to rely on familiar patterns when devising a plot.

I know that writing Comfy Rascals is going to be very challenging. I also know it's going to be great fun! The third thing I know is that it's going to be extremely difficult to sell once it's completed. But that doesn't matter. I'm in love with OuLiPo and what price can be put on that?

Comments:
The price of your career???


But seriously if it wants to be written it will be, and I'll be around to read it.
 
The price of your career???


But seriously if it wants to be written it will be, and I'll be around to read it.
 
The price of your career???


But seriously if it wants to be written it will be, and I'll be around to read it.
 
Funnily enough, I needed that encouragement in triplicate, George! :-)
 
You know I'll want to read it, Rhys. Sounds excellent!

Coincidentally, I came up with an Oulipo joke this morning:

Last year on my birthday there was a knock on the door: it was a strippr! Turns out my friends had sent me a lipogram.

Ho ho!

As an actual lipogram this time, in e:

Six plus six plus six months ago on my birthday, a knock on my door: a lady who would undo buttons and show skin, but was missing a symbol. My pals had got this guy a lipogram!

And again, as a lipogram in a:

Thirty-nine times round the sun since my birth, I listened to the knock on the door: it seemed the girl would remove her vestments but without the letter 'e'. My friends procured this Oulipo surprise!
 
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