French poet, novelist, and publisher, a precursor of postmodernism, whose internationally best-known novel, Zazie dans le métro (1959), was made into a successful film in 1960, directed by Louis Malle. Queneau used in his novels and poems colloquial speech and phonetic spellings. After World War II his work formed a bridge between the irrational world of Breton and other surrealists and the philosophical 'absurd' of existentialism.

'"Relax! Go on, have a drink, that'll make you feel better."
They drank, and Valentin made a face.
"You're certainly the first Frenchman I've ever seen make a face drinking Pernod," said Houssette.
"It's because of all those watsits I caught in the colonies," said Valentin.
"Ought to have had something else, then."
"I wanted to see whether it was still bad for me."'
(from The Sunday of Life, 1951)

Raymond Queneau was born at Le Havre, the son of Auguste Queneau, an ex-colonial soldier, and Jeanne Mignot. He was educated at the lycée in Le Havre and in 1926 he graduated from the Sorbonne. Between 1924 and 1929 Queneau was active in the surrealistic movement. Their manifesto, Permettez! Composed by Queneau, was signed by the entire group. For the inauguration of Arthur Rim baud's statue in 1927, Queneau quoted works in which Rimbaud expressed his contempt for the Church, the famous 'French taste', and culture, much to the horror of the general public. In 1934 Queneau married Janine Kahn; they had one son, who in 1938 became a reader for Gallimard, and from the late 1940s the principal editor of encyclopaedias and histories of literature published in the Pléiade series. Queneau also collaborated with a number of 'New Wave' film directors and Juliette Greco made popular his song 'Si tu t'imagines.' In 1951 Queneau was elected to the Goncourt Academy. He died on October 26, 1976.

From a very early age Queneau was interested in language. During his military service in North Africa in 1925 he discovered that he did not understand the ordinary language of the common French soldier. Years later he visited Greece and became involved in discussions concerning the differences between classical and demotic Greek. He saw that modern written French must free itself from the conventions of style, spelling and vocabulary that date from the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Queneau's first book, Le chiendent, appeared in 1933. The story was set in Paris and dealt with the search for an immense sum of money. The book was noted for its use of slang and is considered Queneau's best. Language was not for Queneau simply a means of expression. He argued that the real subject of his work is language itself. Many's of Queneau's novels and poems are very difficult to translate - they are experimental, based on spoken French, and play with words and spelling. Zazie starts with the word 'Doukipdonktan' which is a phonetic transcription of 'D'où est-ce qu'ils puent donc tant?' (What part of them is it that stinks so much?).

j'écris quelques poèmes
qui valent je l'espère
ceux que j'élaborais
lorsque j'avais vingt ans
je les signais d'ailleurs
de la même fa çon
q-u-e-n-e-a-
u-r-a-i- grec mond
(from 'Vieillir')

Si tu t'imagines (1952) assembles most of Queneau's poetry. The work is remarkable in its delight in Joycean wordplay and neologisms. In his novels Queneau focuses on unpretentious ordinary people, characters from the margins of society, and such urban locales as metro stations, small cafés, and suburban cinemas. On est toujours troup bon avec les femmes (1947) is a tale set in an Ireland that never was and Pierrot mon ami (1942) is a detective story, perhaps without a crime. Quenau has noted that in the American crime novel writers are no longer concerned with the puzzle as much as with the characters and the detective story has become existentialist in the journalistic sense. In Loin de Ruel (1944) the protagonist becomes the hero of the films he sees - like Buster Keaton in Sherlock, Jr. (1924). Exercices de style (1947) explored linguistic conventions. Queneau presented ninety-nine different versions of a single, totally insignificant anecdote, set in a bus and a park. The story is told among others as an official letter, as a blurb for a novel, as a sonnet, and in "Opera English."

In Zazie dans le métro a young girls comes to Paris for a few days. Zazie spends time with her uncle Gabriel, who works as a dancer in a homosexual nightclub without being homosexual himself. After finishing his act a lady says to Gabriel: 'You were so amusing!' - and he answers: 'don't forget the art in it, though. It's not just amusing, it's also art.' Again Quenau writes in a semi-serious way, employing meaningless everyday language, including swearwords and other vulgarities. Le Dimanche de la vie (1951, The Sunday of Life) was Queneau's tenth novel. The central figure is Valentin Brû, ex-Private, whom Queneau follows during the period of 1936-40. The book contained one of Queneau's most famous words, 'Polocilacru,' meaning 'Paul aussi l'a cru' (Paul believed it too).

"He saw that Houssette believed him. Valentin felt awkward, and he wanted to undeceive him. He admired the facility with which he had created a little zone of error in the reasonable mind of the grocer. Up till now he had always thought that language ought to formulate the truth, and silence hide it. The words he would use to Madame Saphir's customers, male and female, it wouldn't even be zones of error that they would form, but zones of confusion in which illusion might remain in suspense until the end of a life."
(from The Sunday of Life)

For further reading: Raymond Queneau by J. Bens (1962); Queneau by A. Bergens (1963); Queneau by J. Guicharnaud (1965); Raymond Queneau by P. Gayot (1966); Jeu et profondeur chez Raymond Queneau by J.-M Klinkesberg (1967); Raymond Queneau by J. Queval (1971); Les poèmes de Raymond Queneau by R. Baligand (1972); Critical Essays by R. Barthes (1972); The Flowers of Fiction by V. Kogan (1982); Queneau's Fiction by S. Shorley (1985); The Lyric Encyclopeadia of Raymond Queneau by J.A. Hale (1989); The Representation of Women in the Autobiographical Fiction of Raymond Queneau by M. Velguth (1990); Rewriting Greece: Queneau and the Agony of Presence by Constantin Toloudis (1995); Raymond Queneau and Carole Maso, ed. by John O'Brien (1997); Naming & Unnaming: On Raymond Queneau by Jordan Stump (1998)

• Le chiendent, 1933 - The Bark Tree
• Gueule de Pierre, 1934
• Les derniers jours, 1936
• Odile, 1937
• Chêne et chien, 1937 - transl.
• Les enfants du limon, 1938 - Children of Clay
• Un rude hiver, 1939 - A Hard Winter
• Les temps mêlés, 1941
• Pierrot mon ami, 1942 - Pierrot
• Les ziaux, 1943
• En passant, 1944
• Foutaises, 1944
• Loin de Rueil, 1944 - The Skin of Dreams
• L'instant fatal, 1946
• Pictogrammes, 1946
• À la limite de la forêt, 1947 - At the Edge of the Forest
• Bucoloques, 1947
• On est toujours trop bon avec les femmes, 1947 (under pseud. Sally Mara) - We Always Treat Women Too Well
• Exercises de style, 1947 - Exercises in Style
• Une trouille verte, 1947
• Monuments, 1948
• Saint Glinglin, 1948 - transl.
• Bâtons, chiffres et lettres, 1950
• Petite cosmogonie portative, 1950
• Journal intime, 1950 (as Sally Mara)
• Le Dimanche de la vie, 1951 - The Sunday of Life
• Si tu t'imagines, 1952
• Le dimanche de la vie, 1952
• Le chien à la mandoline, 1958
• Sonnets, 1958
• Zazie dans le métro, 1959 - Zazie - film 1960, dir. by Louis Malle, screenplay Paul Rappeneau, starring Catherine Demongeot, Philippe Noire
• Cent mille milliards de poèmes, 1961
• Texticules, 1961
• Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier, 1962
• Les ouvres complètes de Sally Mara, 1962
• Bords, 1963
• Les fleurs bleues, 1965 - Blue Flowers
• Une histoire modèle, 1966
• Courir les rues, 1967
• Battre la campagne, 1968
• Le vol d'Icare, 1968 - The Flight of Icarus
• Fendre les flots, 1969
• Du Langage Chien Chez Sylvie Et Bruno, 1971
• Morale élémentaire, 1975
• Pounding the Pavement, Beating the Bushes, and Other Pataphysical Poems, 1986
• Oeuvres complétes, 1989-
• Oulipo Laboratory: Texts from the Bibliotheque Oulipienne (Anti-Classics of Dada.), ed. by Raymond Queneau et al., 1996
• Histoire des Litteratures 1-3, 2000 (paperback)
• Stories and Remarks, 2000