Editing Raymond Queneau (section)

==Queneau and Surrealists==
In 1924 Queneau met and briefly joined the [[Surrealist]]s, but never fully shared their penchants for [[automatic writing]] or ultra-left politics. Like many surrealists, he entered psychoanalysis—however, not in order to stimulate his creative abilities, but for personal reasons, as with Leiris, Bataille, and Crevel.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

[[Michel Leiris]] describes, in ''Brisées'', how he first met Queneau in 1924, while vacationing in [[Nemours]] with [[André Masson]], [[Armand Salacrou]] and [[Juan Gris]]. A common friend, [[Roland Tual]], met Queneau on a train from [[Le Havre]] and brought him over. Queneau was a few years younger and felt less accomplished than the other men. He did not make a big impression on the young bohemians. After Queneau came back from the army, around 1926–7, he and Leiris met at the Café Certa, near L'Opera, a Surrealist hang-out. On this occasion, when conversation delved into Eastern philosophy, Queneau's comments showed a quiet superiority and erudite thoughtfulness. Leiris and Queneau became friends later while writing for Bataille's ''Documents''.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

Queneau questioned Surrealist support of the USSR in 1926. He remained on cordial terms with [[André Breton]],<ref name=":2" /> although he also continued associating with Simone Kahn after Breton split up with her. Breton usually demanded that his followers ostracize his former girlfriends. It would have been difficult for Queneau to avoid Simone, however, since he married her sister, Janine, in 1928.<ref name=":0" /> The year that Breton left Simone, she sometimes traveled around France with her sister and Queneau.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

By 1930, Queneau separated himself significantly from Breton and the Surrealists.<ref name=":0" /> Eluard, Aragon and Breton had joined the French Communist party in 1927; Queneau did not, and instead participated in ''[[Un Cadavre]]'' (A Corpse, 1930), a vehemently anti-Breton pamphlet co-written by [[Georges Bataille|Bataille]], [[Leiris]], [[Prévert]], [[Alejo Carpentier]], [[Jacques Baron]], [[Jacques-André Boiffard|J.-A. Boiffard]], [[Robert Desnos]], [[Georges Limbour]], [[Max Morise]], [[Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes]], and [[Roger Vitrac]].{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

Queneau also joined the [[Democratic Communist Circle]] founded by [[Boris Souvarine]] and took up numerous left-wing and anti-fascist causes.<ref name="Galvin">{{cite book |last1=Galvin |first1=Rachel |title=News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936–1945 |date=2017 |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=209–210}}</ref> He defended the [[Popular Front (France)|Popular Front]] in France and the [[Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)|Republicans]] during the [[Spanish Civil War]].<ref name="Galvin" /> Under the [[Nazi occupation of France]], he published in many left-wing journals associated with the [[French Resistance|Resistance]]. After World War II, Queneau continued to lend his support left-wing manifestos and petitions, and condemned [[McCarthyism]] and anti-communist persecution in Greece.<ref name="Galvin" />

He wrote more scientific than literary reviews: on [[Ivan Pavlov|Pavlov]], [[Vladimir Vernadsky|Vernadsky]] (from whom he got a circular theory of sciences), and a review of a book on the history of equestrian [[caparisons]] by an artillery officer. He also helped with writing passages on Engels and a mathematical dialectic for Bataille's article, "A critique of the foundations of Hegelian dialectic."{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

[[Jacques Lacan]] became seriously interested in mathematics, and made early contributions to game theory, after reading Queneau's works.<ref>Pierre Courtois, Tarik Tazdaït. Jacques Lacan and game theory: an early contribution to common
knowledge reasoning. European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2021, 28 (5), pp.844–869.
ff10.1080/09672567.2021.1908392ff. ffhal-03179414f</ref>