Raymond Queneau - polyglot, novelist, poet, mathematician, screenwriter and translator - was one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century French letters. His work touches on many of the major literary movements of his lifetime, from surrealism to the experimental school of the nouveau roman. He also founded the Oulipo, a collection of writers and mathematicians dedicated to the search for artificial inspiration via the application of constraint. Michael Leiris contributed a preface.This book was reviewed by mjespuiva from Seattle, WA. This person states the following. "These pieces are followed by Notes - a section I rarely like in literature but here it is appropriate, necessary and well done. These pieces often require knowledge of the world play in French or the ability to catch allusions that are unlikely to be known by an English-language reader. A sampling of the texts included:"Dino" is the story of an invisible dog accompanying its master on long walks in Portugal. The dog reappears in "At the Forest's Edge" - a story of a nearly deserted hotel with no cook and a sexually agressive daughter."In Passing", a personal favorite among these texts, tells the story of a couple, a beggar and a passerby twice - changing the gender of the roles between the two tellings."The Cafe de La France" is a bleak view of Le Havre as decimated by the war - a very effective piece mulling over writing and childhood in the context of the ruined city."The Trojan Horse" occurs in a bar where a horse from Troyes insists on purchasing drinks for a couple drinking only water and planning to "hit up" an aunt for financial assistance."Green With Fright" combines wordplay and dream in the story of a man unable to leave the bathroom because of his fear of the nothingness lurking in the hallway."Conversations in Greater Paris" is "found poetry" i.e. an assemblage of bits and pieces of conversations captured in the author's notebooks."Texticles" is a collection of short pieces based in some sense on word play, rhetoric, semantics - they are an excellent example of playing with words as a media rather than as a tool of communication."A Story of Your Own" is an early example of a tree-structure story in which after each piece of the tale, you are offered options as to what should come next."Some Brief Remarks Relative to the Aerodynamic Properties of Addition" is a piece that considers the movement of numbers and arithemetic symbols due to the force of the wind ... an absolute delight."Dream Accounts Aplenty" is a series of short dream accounts told as an example of the shortcomings of dreams as the "stuff" of writing.The other pieces are as diverse as the ones I have mentioned. Don't read this as a relaxing narrative - it isn't; do read this as an exploration of the use of language and narrative." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.