Free Exercises in Style by Raymond Queneau

S.”
    “What did you see? “ asked Robert.
    “I had to wait for at least three before I could get
     on.”
    “Not surprising at that time of day,” said Adolphe.
    “Well, what did you see?” asked René.
    “We were terribly squashed,” said Albert.
    “Good opportunity for pinching bottoms.”
    “Pooh,” said Albert. “That’s got nothing to do
     with it.”
    “Go on, then.”
    “There was a queer sort of chap next to me.”
    “What was he like?” asked René.
    “Tall, skinny, with a queer sort of neck.”
    “What was it like?” asked René.
    “As if someone’d been having a tug of war with
     it.”
    “An elongation,” said Georges.
    “And his hat, now I come to think of it; a queer sort of
     hat.”
    “What was it like?” asked René.
    “Didn’t have a ribbon, but a plaited cord round
     it.”
    “Funny,” said Robert.
    “Then again,” continued Albert, “he was the peevish
     type.”
    “How come?” asked René.
    “He started to pick on the chap next to him.”
    “How come?” asked René.
    “He said he was treading on his toes.”
    “On purpose?” asked Robert.
    “On purpose,” said Albert.
    “And then what?”
    “Then what? He simply went and sat down.”
    “Is that all? “asked René.
    “No. Funny thing is, I saw him again two hours later.”
    “Where?” asked René.
    “In front of the gare Saint-Lazare.”
    “What was he doing there?”
    “I don’t know,” said Albert. “He was walking up
     and down with a pal who was calling his attention to the fact that the button of his
     overcoat was a bit too low.”
    “That is in fact the advice I was giving him,” said
     Theodore.



Page from Queneau’s ms.: “La fonction ∫V(2)02”

QUENEAU'S 1973 SUBSTITUTIONS
    et
theory
    On the S bus, let us consider the set A of
seated passengers and the set U of upright passengers. At a particular stop is
located the set P of people that are waiting. Let C be the set of passengers
that get on; this is a subset of P and is itself the union of the set C' of
passengers that remain on the platform and of the set C" of those who go
and sit down. Demonstrate that the set C" is empty.
    H being the set of cool cats and {
h
} the intersection of H
and of C', reduced to a single element. Following the surjection of the
feet of
h
onto those of
y
(any element of C' that differs
from
h
), the yield is the set W of words pronounced by the element
h
. Set C" having become non-empty, demonstrate that it is
composed of the single element
h
.
    Now let P' equal the set of pedestrians to be found in front of
the gare Saint-Lazare, {
h
,
h'
} the intersection of H and
of P', B being the set of buttons on the overcoat belonging to
h
,
B' the set of possible locations of said buttons according to
h'
, demonstrate that the injection of B into B' is not a
bijection.

efinitional
    In a large self-propelled urban public transportation vehicle
designated by the nineteenth letter of the alphabet, a young excentric with a
nickname given to him in Paris in 1942, having that part of the body that
connects the head to the shoulders stretched out over a certain distance and
wearing on the upper extremity of his body a piece of headgear of variable shape
with a thick intertwined ribbon forming a plait around it—this young excentric,
imputing to an individual who was going from one place to another a misdemeanour
consisting of displacing his feet one after the other onto his own, set off to
place himself on a piece of furniture placed in such a way that it could be sat
upon, said piece of furniture recently having become unoccupied.
    One hundred and twenty minutes later, I saw him once again in front
of the grouping of buildings and of railroad tracks where the unloading of
merchandise and the loading or unloading of passengers takes place. Another
young excentric with a nickname given to him in Paris in 1942 was furnishing him
with advice on what it is appropriate to do with a round of metal, of horn, of
wood,