Editing Raymond Queneau (section)

==Career==
Queneau spent much of his life working for the [[Gallimard]] publishing house, where he began as a reader in 1938. He later rose to be general secretary and eventually became director of ''l'Encyclopédie de la Pléiade'' in 1956. During some of this time, he also taught at l'École Nouvelle de Neuilly. He entered the [['Pataphysics|Collège de 'Pataphysique]] in 1950, where he became [[Satrap]].

In 1950, [[Juliette Gréco]] recorded "Si tu t'imagines", a song by [[Joseph Kosma]] with lyrics by Queneau.

[[File:Raymond Queneau S.jpg|thumb|<div align="center">Effigy of Raymond Queneau, Satrap of Collège de 'Pataphysique, by [[Jean-Max Albert]] Rt</div>]]

During this time, Queneau also acted as a [[translator]], notably for [[Amos Tutuola]]'s ''[[The Palm-Wine Drinkard]]'' ({{lang|fr|L'Ivrogne dans la brousse}}) in 1953. Additionally, he edited and published [[Alexandre Kojève]]'s lectures on [[Hegel]]'s ''Phenomenology of Spirit''. Queneau had been a student of Kojève during the 1930s and was, during this period, also close to writer [[Georges Bataille]].

As an author, Queneau came to general attention in France with the publication in 1959 of his novel ''[[Zazie dans le Métro (novel)|Zazie dans le métro]]''.<ref name=":0" /> In 1960 [[Zazie dans le Métro|the film adaptation]] directed by [[Louis Malle]] was released during the ''[[Nouvelle Vague]]'' movement. ''Zazie'' explores colloquial language as opposed to "standard" written French. The first word of the book, the alarmingly long "Doukipudonktan" is a playful [[phonetic]] transcription of "D'où qu'il pue / qu'ils puent donc tant?" – "Why does it / does he / do they stink so much?"

Before he founded the {{lang|fr|[[Ouvroir de littérature potentielle]]}} (Oulipo) in 1960,<ref name=":1" /> Queneau was attracted to mathematics as a source of inspiration. He became a member of la [[Société Mathématique de France]] in 1948. In Queneau's mind, elements of a text, including seemingly trivial details such as the number of chapters, were things that had to be predetermined, perhaps calculated. This was an issue during the writing of ''A [[Hundred Thousand Billion Poems]]'', also known as ''100,000,000,000,000 Poems''.<ref name=":1" /> Queneau wrote 140 lines in 10 individual sonnets that could all be taken apart and rearranged in any order. Queneau calculated that anyone reading the book 24 hours a day would need 190,258,751 years to finish it.<ref name=":1" /> While Queneau was completing this work, he asked mathematician [[François Le Lionnais]] for help with issues he was having, and their conversation led to a role of mathematics in literature, which led to the creation of the [[Oulipo]].<ref name=":1" /> His work encouraged [[Jacques Lacan]] to pursue his pioneering work on game theory and the use of mathematics in psychoanalysis.<ref>"The
Number Thirteen and the Logical Form of Suspicion"</ref>

A later work, {{lang|fr|Les fondements de la littérature d'après David Hilbert}} (1976), alludes to the mathematician [[David Hilbert]], and attempts to explore the foundations of literature by quasi-mathematical derivations from textual axioms. Queneau claimed this final work would prove "a hidden master of the automaton." Pressed by GF, his interlocutor, Queneau confided that the text "could never appear, but had to hide to glorify that without agency."

One of Queneau's most influential works is ''[[Exercises in Style]]'', which tells the simple story of a man's seeing the same stranger twice in one day.  It tells that short story in 99 different ways, demonstrating the tremendous variety of styles in which storytelling can take place. An excerpt from this piece was published in [[0 to 9 Magazine|0 to 9 magazine]], a 1960s publication which experimented with language and meaning-making.

The works of Raymond Queneau are published by [[Gallimard]] in the collection ''[[Bibliothèque de la Pléiade]]''.