From Publishers Weekly
One of the author's early works, this charming, semi-autobiographical novel was written before Queneau developed the highly intellectualized style that became his trademark. Like Queneau, who became involved with the Surrealists in the mid-'20s after military service in North Africa, the narrator, Roland Travy, joins a group headed by a flamboyant individual named Anglares (a disguised portrait of surrealist Andre Breton). Queneau takes deliciously funny stabs at his "fellow revolutionaries of the unconscious," describing their flirtation with communism and, ultimately, Travy's break with the group. In the meantime, Travy marries Odile, a sunny but flakey young woman from a similar bourgeois background, but their relationship is too bizarre even for the Surrealists. Written in a cool detached style, full of witticisms and puns, this is Queneau at his most accessible. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Independent Publisher
Any discussion of contemporary French literature inevitably includes an analysis of the social and political climate amrounding the creation of a, particular book. The work of Raymond Queneau is no exception. Odik, first published in France in 1937, reflects Queneau's commitment to certain tenets of the Surrealist movement along with his interest in the Communist Party. Yet this is not a didactic book. Instead, it is a lively and entertaining story, full of puns and word play and inside jokes as well as a moving account of one's man search for meaning. Roland Travy considers himself a theoretical mathernatician, a solitary scholar working on esoteric and incommunicable problems. Disoriented by World War L plunged into the chaotic world of the Parisian intelligensia in the 1930s, he becomes involved with two vastly different groups of people. Here Queneau pits ineffectual intellectuals, obsessed with a multitude of meaningless but fashionable pursuits, against the world of garnblers, pimps, and prostitutes living precariously on the edge. Travy meeds Odile, a woman of questionable virtue. They marry, but live apart. Escaping to Greece, Travy gains a new perspective. He returns to Odile only when he recognizes the silliness of his lifestyle and the need for love in his life. What makes OdiL- so remarkable is the density of the text, the multiple layers of both illusion and implication. Caught in a Kafkaesque predicament, Travy is able to think, "Guys like me, communists-to-be, shouldn't make conversation with a magistrate." Of Greece Travy says, "It was only after a week that we got around to seeing the sights, our determination to be modem having been satisfied by this display of indifference." Humor and pathos are artfully intertwined, with Queneau always in control of the sometimes absurd, often whimsically thin, plot. Carol Sanders has done a wonderful job of translating what might have been a very difficult work. The text flows effortlessly from lists of proselytizing groups ("...the unadulterated asymmetric revolutionaries, the intolerant polypsychists, the proMussolinian anti-fascist terrorists of the extreme left...") to poetically simple confessions C'I was pretending to be a mathematician. I thought sand castles were algebraic constructions and puzzles were geometric theorems."). The text notes she provides are thorough and extremely helpful in understanding Queneau's ambiguous perception of the world. All in all Odilee is an extraordinary production, a book to be treasured. The Dalkey Archive Press is to be commended for bringing this fine work to the public's attention.


John Updike, New Yorker 7-4-88
"We always feel good reading a Queneau novel; he is the least depressing of the moderns, the least heavy, with something Mozartian about the easy, self-pleasing flow of his absurd plots."


New Orleans Times-Picayune
"[Queneau's work is] characterized by a playful spirit and an intelligence unmatched by any of his contemporaries. . . . How can anyone not love Queneau?"


Kirkus Reviews 10-15-88
"A marvelous sendup of the Surrealists of the late 1920s and early 1930s as well as a moving love story. . . . Both a madcap roman a clef . . . and a parable about the search for spiritual equilibrium and human meaning."


Kirkus
"A marvelous sendup of the Surrealists of the late 1920s and early 1930s as well as a moving love story....Both a madcap roman a clef ... and a parable about the search for spiritual equilibrium and human meaning."


Book Description
Fiction. First published in France in 1937, this brilliant, moving novel is about the devastating psychological effects of war, about falling in love, about politics subverting human relationships, and about life in Paris during the early 1930s amid intellecturals and artists whose activities range from writing for radical magazines to conjuring the ghost of Lenin in seances. Raymon Quneau (1903-1976) has been one of the most powerful forces in shaping the direction of French fiction in the past fifty years. His other novels includes THE LAST DAYS, PIERROT MON AMI, AND SAINT GLINGLIN.


Language Notes
Text: English, French (translation)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Even though I can't remember my childhood, my memory being as if ravaged by some disaster, there nevertheless remains a series of images from the time before my birth . . . of my first twenty years, only ruins are left in a memory devastated by unhappiness." These opening lines from Queneau's novel, first published in France in 1937, are a brilliant, moving introduction to a story about the devastating psychological effects of war, about falling in love, about politics subverting human relationships, about life in Paris during the early 1930s amid intellectuals and artists whose activities range from writing for radical magazines to conjuring the ghost of Lenin in seances. Most of all, it's about Roland Travy's agonizing search for happiness after having been conditioned to live unhappily but safely for so long, about his growing self-awareness and need for another human being, about his willingness to shed his fears and accept his humanity. This edition includes an introduction by the translator.

FROM THE CRITICS

Albert Camus

Raymond Queneau's books are ambiguous fairylands in which scenes of everyday life are mingled with a melancholy that is ageless. Though they are not without bitterness, their author seems always to set his face against conclusions, and to be moved by a kind of horror of seriousness.

Picayune New Orleans Times

How can anyone not love Queneau?

SmallPress

All in all, Odile is an extraordinary production, a book to be treasured.

Publishers Weekly