Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Archive) [Paperback]

Harry Mathews (Editor), Alastair Brotchie (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0947757961 | ISBN-13: 978-0947757960 | Publication Date: November 1998

Anthology of prose, poetry and literary critcism. "OULIPO COMPENDIUM is a late 20th-century kabala, a labyrinth of literary secrets that will lure the uninitiated into rethinking everything they know about books and writing. The editors have done an astounding job putting together this nutty, one-of-a-kind book. It is the definitive encyclopedia of contemporary word-magic" -- Paul Auster. "Oulipo was--is--a seedbed, a grimace, a carnival. This is an indispensable book for everyone who cares about literature"--Susan Sontag. The OULIPO COMPENDIUM abounds in material for writers, teachers and scholars; it also offers a cornucopia of entertainment for curious readers. "Oulipans: rats who build the labyrinth from which they plan to escape" -- Raymond Queneau.

Product Details

• Paperback: 335 pages
• Publisher: Atlas Press (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0947757961
• ISBN-13: 978-0947757960
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #888,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Basic tool set for home, auto and brain repairs, July 26, 2000

By 

boeanthropist "Philip Welsh" (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Archive) (Paperback)

Rather than individually buying a variety of basic tools, consider getting the Oulipo Compendium, which contains all the essentials: screwdrivers, wrenches, pliers, detective-novel-plot-generation-cards, Raymond Queneau's sonnet matrix, etc. Part of the benefit of an oulipo compendium of this scope is that it comes with its own carrying case, includes just about everything you need for at-home brain surgery, and is organized alphabetically, in the form of a dictionary. Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie's home/auto/linguistic tool set meets all these needs and more. Fits both standard and metric sockets. Features basic Oulipo tool set, assorted sizes of screwdrivers and ice-picks, sestina modifiers, biographies of oulipo participants side-by-side with multiple permutations of the N+7 theorem, socket wrenches with 70 sockets and 5 fingers and toes, and an especially amusing photograph of Georges Perec wearing a saucy beard. Stores easily on bokshelf or in the trunk of your car for travel emergencies. Smite your enemy by inventing a law which turns "Y" into "A" whenever it is preceded by "ENEM". Recover language and see what it's like to not live as a slave to your mother's tongue.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and compelling guide to Oulipo and like groups, January 11, 1999

By 

W. Flesch (arlington, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Archive) (Paperback)

Probably the best way for an English Language reader to get a sense of what Oulipo does at its best--you get to see how much more than a stunt the whole endeavor is. It includes much hard-to-find material, including a translation (!) of Queneau's One-hundrerd-trillion sonnets, and some neat experiments in severe overdetermination. It also includes the wonderful Skinhead Hamlet, by Richard Curtis. (Oddly, the editors--Harry Mathews is one of the major members of the workshop--say they can't track him down, but he's the screenwriter for Four Weddings and a Funeral, so shouldn't be too hard to find.) Lot's of interesting material on Georges Perec, and also on an American writer who wrote a novel in which no word is used more than once--a kind of hyper-Flaubertian enterprise.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please read this review., July 22, 2001

By 

Nathan Robinson (Phat Bojee) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Archive) (Paperback)

Before reading this book, I didn't know anything about Oulipo....do you? If not, here's the gist: Oulipo are a bunch of slightly crazy people who want to find new and fun ways to write stuff. So, they create all these interesting and zany techniques to generate their writing...to me, it seems similar to how modern composers generate notes and rhythms using tone rows and stuff like that. This book is a "compendium" of these techniques, Oulipo authors, their works, etc. I think it's great. I'd recommend it to writers who want to try something new (as opposed to just writing "from the heart", or whatever) and I'd also recommend it to people who like modern, formalist type stuff. Have fun.