We Always Treat Women Too Well: A Novel [Paperback]

Raymond Queneau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1981

We Always Treat Women Too Well was first published as a purported work of pulp fiction by one Sally Mara, but this novel by Raymond Queneau is a further manifestation of his sly, provocative, wonderfully wayward genius. Set in Dublin during the 1916 Easter rebellion, it tells of a nubile beauty who finds herself trapped in the central post office when it is seized by a group of rebels. But Gertie Girdle is no common pushover, and she quickly devises a coolly lascivious strategy by which, in very short order, she saves the day for king and country. Queneau's wickedly funny send-up of cheap smut—his response to a popular bodice-ripper of the 1940s—exposes the link between sexual fantasy and actual domination while celebrating the imagination's power to transmute crude sensationalism into pleasure pure and simple.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

RAYMOND QUENEAU (1903–1976) was born in the French town of Le Havre and educated at the Sorbonne. He performed his military service in Morocco. An early association with the Surrealists ended in 1929, and after completing a scholarly study of literary madmen of the nineteenth century for which he was unable to find a publisher, Queneau turned to fiction, writing his first novel, Le Chiendent (published as Witch Grass by NYRB Classics), in Greece in the summer of 1932. Influenced by James Joyce and Lewis Carroll, Queneau sought to reinvigorate French literature, grown feeble through formalism, with a strong dose of language as really spoken. He further encouraged innovation by founding, with the mathematician François Le Lionnais, the famous group OULIPO (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), which investigated literary composition based on the application of strict formal or mathematical procedures (members of the group included Italo Calvino, Georges! Perec, and Harry Mathews). Queneau’s many books, which typically blur the boundaries between fiction, poetry, and the essay, include Pierrot mon ami, The Sunday of Life, Zazie in the Metro (made into a movie by Louis Malle), and Exercises in Style; under the name of Sally Mara, he published We Always Treat Women Too Well, a brilliant comic spoof on the excesses of smutty popular novels. Queneau was the editor of the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade as well as a fine poet, whose lyric "Si tu t’imagines" was a hit for the celebrated postwar chanteuse Juliette Gréco. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 174 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 2 edition (September 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811207935
• ISBN-13: 978-0811207935
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,435,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Irish by the French, December 24, 2003

By 

LEs (Houston, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Always Treat Women Too Well: A Novel (Paperback)

All of the characters in this work are minor characters in Joyce's Ulysses. Yet, this is another day, another event, and the relation to Joyce is only one of names, or is it?
This is work of frank sex and violence. The heroine? A nymphette. Who wins and are the revolutionaries really bad people? Queneau leaves that question open, prefering to unfurl the problematics of human relations in what can only be described as an unusual circumstance.
Read it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Revolt(ing) or Reveal(ing)?, April 2, 2008

By 

Dick Johnson (Oklahoma USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: We Always Treat Women Too Well (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

Hilarious! There is rape (maybe?); murder (war?); and an analysis of fashion.

The situational morality was the keystone of the book. Should I? Will she? If she doesn't tell did it really happen? Did it really happen?

Stereotypes abound in the characters. I have never been closer to Ireland than wading along the coast of Maine, but I felt I was there. I could see the action as it was being described.

This is a marvelous short read that ended way to soon, but couldn't have been made longer without ruining it.

2 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Irish revolution viewed from a bank..., September 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: We Always Treat Women Too Well (Hardcover)

Irish revolutionnaries in Dublin. They try to invest the city. We follow a group of them in a bank. And a young woman trapped in the "lavatories" (in english in the text) fiancée of an english captain... A story of innocent people who tempted to enter the history. Written in a fresh and joyful language.

For more information this book is a part of another which title is "the private diary of Sally Mara" which is really worthwhile to read.