Oulipo

It's French language week, in case you need to be informed... I think most people probably need to be informed - I certainly wasn't informed, and found out just in time to catch a couple of wonderful evenings of Oulipian recitals in different venues in London. Jacques Roubaud, Marcel Bénabou, Hervé Le Tellier, Ian Monk, Paul Fournel and Stanley Chapman from the Oulipo group were all on show on both nights, together with David Bellos, the man who achieved the amazing feat of translating George Perec's La vie: mode d'emploi.

Oulipo is a writing group which defines itself by the constraints it imposes on the writers. An example of one of the most simple to understand Oulipian constraints is the lipogram, where a certain letter of the alphabet - commonly a vowel - is prohibited, and the writer must not use words which use that letter. There are also far more complicated constraints which can serve as structuring principles for the text: the text in the spotlight on Monday night was George Perec's La vie: mode d'emploi. This text is structured according to all manner of constraints: the basis is that it is about a house with 100 spaces, and each space is dealt with by a chapter. I don't claim to have read the book, nor would I expect to follow it very easily.

This first gathering took place at L'Institut Français in South Kensington, where both the bibliothèque and the stage were totally packed (the latter was overflowing, in fact, and M. Le Tellier had to place a table at the side of him in case he fell off the stage completely). There followed a highly interesting talk by David Bellos regarding the difficulties of translating a writer such as Perec, in which he himself put together a technically entertaining inquisition about whether the few mistakes regarding laterality (left and right) in Perec's novel were intentional, how to translate such obstacles, and whether his translations of the obstacles were valid. Perec, it seems, had self-confessed problems with laterality, or dichotomies of any sort (the audience laughed when even the Capulet / Montague dichotomy was listed).

After the talk by the translator, the Oulipians performed some wonderful bilingual readings of Perec's work. It was clear that they were thoroughly enjoying the event, and the audience was too. It was no surprise, then, that on Tuesday night the Calder Bookshop in Southwark began to fill up well before the show began. The atmosphere that the group of writers was creating was very warm and welcoming, and there was a definite sparkle to the way in which some of them spoke. Paul Fournel in particular, who presented the show and participated, was very entertaining . At the bookshop, the Oulipians read from an array of texts (generally their own work, although Fournel and Chapman read some of Queneau's Exercices de style). We were treated to a variety of poetic brilliance that made the time just fly by.

I've been interested in Oulipo for some years now, so getting the opportunity to share the same room as some of the Oulipians was a very pleasurable experience. On both nights, the writers managed to make the audience ignore their uncomfortable chairs and escape into a humorous and entertaining world of productive texts. Who knows when such a gathering will occur again, but anybody involved this time around will agree that the events were very special indeed.