Oulipo Compendium (Atlas Archive) (Paperback)

~ Harry Mathews (Editor), Alastair Brotchie (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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: 336 pages
• Publisher: Atlas Press; illustrated edition edition (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0947757961
• ISBN-13: 978-0947757960
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,108,262 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 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	fishanthrope "Philip Welsh" (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews

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.

16 of 16 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)

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book of Ways, October 2, 2001

By A Customer

If you ever come across Arthur Brand's little article on the Oulipo, cherish it. I read it back in the late 80s, in an anthology somewhere, and I've never been able to find it since. It whet my appetite for these crazy masters of restricted composition, who spend their time devising totally new ways to write. This isn't a book for the "poetry of everyday life" set, or writing workshop clones. It's a book, as Brand said, for "mad scientists, mathematicians, monster-makers and angels." It's a writer's encylopedia, stuffed with ideas, strategies, graphs, games, machines, etc for making poetry and fiction.