Walled From the Wild

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Walled from the Wild

(Sub)urban Enclosure in Raymond QueneausThe Bark Treeand Other Novels

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D. Brian Mann,University of NebraskaLincoln

The Bark Tree, Raymond Queneau

First Published: 1933Type of Work: AntistoryTime of Work: The early twentieth centurySetting: The outskirts of ParisPrincipal Characters: Mme Cloche, Bebe Toutout, Old Taupe, Ernestine,

Etienne Marcel, Theo, Pierre Le Grand, Narcense, Saturnin BelhotelGenres: Long fiction, AntistorySubjects: Twentieth century, Alienation, Paris, Violence, War, Death ordying, Adventure, GossipLocales: Paris, France

The Novel

Raymond Queneaus The Bark Tree is among the firstantinovels and,as such, neither attempts to tell a carefullyplotted story with beginning,middle, and end, nor strives to becoherent. In addition, it does not include well-developedcharacters or offer readers any moral or philosophicalconclusion about life. The Bark Treeshould be considered asan energetic, vibrant assault on convention, in which people areeither things or real human beings. In many ways, the novel is asustained joke about the random, precarious lives people leadand t

By the end of a career that spanned more than five decades, Raymond Queneau(19031976) had produced an extremely varied and diverse tableau of literature thatto this day defies categorization and description. If not for the heterogeneity of hisartistic talent demonstrated in the kaleidoscopic variety of an output that includes

fifteen novels, numerous essays, interviews, correspondence, film, and a dozenvolumes of lyric poetry, Queneau is widely remembered for his immense vocabularyof interests, scope of erudition, and contributions to philosophy, mathematics,cinema, music, and historiography. It is the innovative novelist and consummateParisian, however, who has become perhaps the most noteworthy to readers andcritics of twentieth-century French literature.

In his 1948 novel Saint Glinglin(1993),[1]the character Paul Nabonide declares thatlife is perceived only behind the stone walls of human construction, its lightemanating toward a rural landscape characterized as dark and horrific. Often seen toillustrate Queneaus predilection for urban life and his distaste for the countryside,

this and similar passages in his early works Les Enfants du Limon(1938; Children ofClay, 1998) and Chne et chien(1937; Oak and Dog, 1995[2]) lead one to wonder
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why the author would show such antipathy towards so-called natural surroundings.There are varying interpretations of the way Queneau portrays landscape, the city,and the relationship between them. One critic, pointing out bluntly that the authorsimply didnt like nature,[3]might lead readers to surmise that the apparent favoringof architecture over landscape in Queneaus texts could be simply a matter of taste.

But this hardly seems appropriate for the study of an oeuvre as complicated andeclectic as Queneaus. Even when a pattern becomes evident over several of hisworks, it is rarely consistent and is difficult to interpret. Neither he nor his charactersuniformly indicate an aversion to rurality, and although Queneau certainly preferredthe tumult and intellectual challenge of his adult life in Paris to his childhoodexistence in Le Havre, he would likely not have thought of this port city as a countryhamlet. In addition, a wider reading of Queneau, especially his poetry, reveals thatthe imagery of natures beauty is frequent throughout.

Thus, the purpose of this study is not to analyze the negativeportrayal of nature and landscape in his work, but to examine

the setting of his first novel, Le Chiendent (1933; The BarkTree, 1968), and suggest that its (sub)urban world and thestructures that comprise it can be seen as a metaphor forQueneaus approach to much of his writing.

The approach of imposing structure and formal constraint as the driving forcesbehind Queneaus creative impulse has been the focus of extensive critical inquiry.Queneau himself discussed and wrote of it at length during his career. Although thisaesthetic, as well as the (sub)urban settings of his novels, has served as rich veinsfor Queneau scholarship over the years, a relationship between the two has yet to beestablished. Reviewed in this light, the negative portrayal of nature in the

aforementioned works reveals the deeper significance of what man and Queneau, inparticular, have wrought in its midst, the structures within which they are walled fromthe wild.

Queneaus evolution as an author does indeed show that he was partial to the Cityfor his fictional settings and events. While Saint Glinglins opposing urban and rusticmilieuxoffer an aesthetic paradox, Nabonides favor of culture over nature alsoreflects certain aspects of Queneaus writing. As a former surrealist who ultimatelycame to express himself so much more fully through the formal constraints of literarytradition, Queneau not only insists upon the City and its structures as imagery, butupon their very structure itselfa fact that is evident in the rigorous, internalorganization of his novels. Claude Simonnet, one of the first to analyze the novel atlength, sees this organization as evidence of Queneaus poetic axiom that, similar tothe construction of a building, the novel and its development are the result ofdiscretionary choices. Conditioned by nothing, the work of art is not a naturalcreation, but is, in its essence, artificial.[4]

Roland Barthes uses the metaphor of architectureto describe Queneaus creations,[5]and, as I examine them in this context, this art of enclosing space seems to bepresent in more ways than first meet the eye. The representation ofwallsand otherstructures, as well as allusions to them, have led me in search of a relationshipbetween Queneaus portrayal of architectural enclosures and his belief in theconstraints of form and structure as a source of creativity. Since the Cityand its

structures are, in fact, the very space of experience in most of his fiction, it seemslogical that the edifice, literary or architectural, would be the classic example of
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Quenellian space. His first novel, The Bark Tree, demonstrates such a relationship,one maintained in many of those to follow.

At this point, it would seem appropriate to give a brief summary of the novels plot,but Queneau has made this virtually impossible. Simonnet describes The Bark Treeas the classic example of a novel whose story cannot be told because it is theclassic example of the novel-poem, noting that the idea of describing what a poem isabout to someone who has not read it is manifestly absurd.[6]In her introduction tothe translated work, Barbara Wright puts it this way: What is [The Bark Tree] about?Well, it is not aboutanything, it issomething. And that something includes a vastamount of what goes to make up human life the ordinary man (and woman)caught in the ordinary meshes of trying, unarmed, to make a living, to live a life (BT5). Queneaus point in making it so difficult to recount The Bark Trees story is that,for the novels characters and for us, life is made up primarily of the numbingly banalsituations that occupy daily existence. Most of this existence, therefore, is essentiallymeaningless, and just as the meaningless has no place in memory, so does it seem

to have little place in the plot of a novel.However, certain events and people doprovide this existence with substance, whiletime and place offer it structure and direction. The novel begins in a dreary, urbansetting as the protagonist, a nondescript bank employee, is leaving work. As hischaracter develops, his perceptions of the world are juxtaposed with those of theother characters, each of which represents, in the Cartesian sense, merely one fixedpoint of observation. These various characters, most of whom have never met, aregradually brought together by a series of accidents, whose significance is onlymade clear much later in the plot. The protagonist is first observed by a pseudo-narrator and followed to his home. His wife, in turn, is observed and followed there bytwo young men. The protagonist observes some rubber ducks floating in a hat full of

water and, noticing that something had changed (BT11), takes up the practice ofobserving people as well. He begins to observe one Madame Cloche and herhusband, Dominique, who owns a small hut where chips (French fries) are sold. Apedestrian is killed by a bus, and another (who turns out to be the protagonist) isslightly injured by a car. Both of these events are observed by Madame Cloche. Asthese observers accumulate and become acquainted with one another, usually at thehut, they all take to observing a strange old junk dealer, who has placed amysterious blue door against the inside wall of his home. The dealer refuses to sellthe door to the protagonist and his observer, and the hut owners young sonoverhears their speculations about what may lie behind it. Convinced that there is afortune behind this door, Cloche and a waitress, Ernestine, contrive a plan forErnestine to marry the dealer and abscond with the fortune themselves beforegangsters succeed in doing so. Little by little, due to the circumstances surroundingthese events, the characters become acquainted and are drawn to the enigmaticdoor, which never reveals its secrets.

As determined readers, we ultimately surmise that The Bark Trees central dilemmaamounts to deciphering the real from the many deceptive appearancesthat surfaceas the plot unfolds. And as we read, we realize that the characters are simply tryingto do the same. The various real and deceptive threads in the narrative ultimatelylead to a farcical war between the French and the Etruscans. More characters die,others disappear, and still others revolt against the novel itself, thus bringing it to an

uncertain and unsatisfying end. Within this simple, yet vastly complex, narrativeframework, conventional notions about the perception of identity, chronology, and
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spatiality are questioned in what has been called an attempt to renew narrativeforms.[7]

In order to establish the connection between (sub)urban enclosure and Queneauspartiality to form and structure, lets examine the degree to which space and placemanifest themselves in The Bark Treeas essential narrative elements. To do this, wemust focus upon its opses,[8]or settings, which I divide into two categories, orlevels.

I

The first level takes shape as a familiar, generic space withuniversally recognizable elements that are easily identifiable tothe reader. I call this space a lieu commun, or commonplace.The usually accepted meaning of this termordinariness ortrite remarkis simply recast here in spatial terms. Lieuxcommunsare usually located in an urban or suburban setting,

and various of Queneaus other novels have included suchexamples as the post office, the caf, the amusement park, thecinema, the cemetery, and the countryside. In The Bark Tree,Queneau has chosen the city itself as his lieu commun,characterizing (sub)urban Paris with a timeless, placelesscommonality that makes it accessible to readers totallyunfamiliar with the French capital.

There are autobiographical elements in his depiction of these generic spaces, and areader familiar with Queneaus life can identify in them the various places andstructures important to him. However, his grand fascination is with the commonpeople, and he chooses his characters from among them. And, by choosing thespaces they inhabit as opses, he allows his readers to see the world as hischaracters see it. Painted in the broadest of strokes to establish a certain frame ofmind, these (sub)urban locales provide common ground for a story that, according toJean-Marie Catonn, any reader can follow, regardless of his/her level of erudition,and understand what is happening, even if s/he cant always perceive its finality.[9]

Continuing his description, Catonn sees lieux communscollectively as a universeexclusive to Queneau; its humble inhabitants both nave and cunning, their limitedambition typical of a mediocre humanity that is tailor-made for the suburbanbungalows in which [the inhabitants] bury themselves upon disembarking from thetrain or subway, as if in their effort to leave the country they never made it to the

capital.[10]This perspective on the lieu communseems to be Queneaus answer to the realistmasterpieces of Flaubert and Balzac, to whom he has acknowledged a great debt.The Norman countryside sketched early in Madame Bovaryand Un Cur simpleconveys the idea of odoriferous, small-town provincialism beforethe shabbystructures and disillusioned inhabitants of Tostes, Yonville, and Pont lvque areelaborated. Early in Eugnie Grandet, as if from the air, Balzac spreads bucolicvalleys and villages before us, and it could be almost any temperate countryside wesurvey. Excruciatingly descriptive detail quickly follows this general impression,whereas in The Bark Treeand Queneaus other novels such detail is either sparse,

delayed until later, or entirely nonexistent. So although Catonn sees Queneauslieux communsas composed of restaurants, seedy bistros, train-station lobbies, bus-
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stops, public transport, busy shopping streets, village fairs, bric-a-brac shops, [and]other public places,[11]they fit my definition only insofar as they make up an overallbackdrop that is slowly shaped into an opsis.

As the general impression of space given by the lieux communsyields to narrativeelements that can be identified by the particularsof their construction (such as thechips hut), I see them as lieux-dits.

II

Terminology may again be problematic, but where a lieu-ditnormally indicates a name whose traditional use designates ahistorical or topographical feature, I am merely restricting its useto structures of architectural origin. Here, the lieu-dit is aparticular place which indeed has a name, but like Homaissapothecary or Grandets home, it is also recognized by anenclosing structure and specific function that differentiates it

from other places.It is the relationship between these two levelsat which the opsisis portrayed thatconvinces me of Queneaus sensitivity to space, structure, and the limits placed uponthem. In seven symmetrically constructed chapters of thirteen sections each, TheBark Treeevokes the medieval epic by recounting an odyssey through a murkymetropolitan domain, the novels primary lieu commun. With public transportationserving in place of the trusty steed, a dazzling and sometimes confusing array ofcharacters moves constantly and repetitively between the individual lieux-dits, whosemain attributes seem to be squalor and confinement. Against this background andunder the gaze of a mysterious other man (BT7), one claustrophobic experienceafter another converts a mere silhouette into a protagonist and three-dimensionalphilosopher.

As the novel opens, we are amidst an expanse of unnamed structures that constitutea similarly unnamed metropolis. At first only an anonymous landscape, this suburbanspace assumes an oppressive, almost malevolent presence. Because The Bark Treewas his first novel, Queneaus entire career can be said to arise from the Citys stark,faceless structures: This particular silhouette emerged from an enormous,unbearable building (BT7). Indeed, the narrative is always grounded in the banal,quotidian aspects of city life that, despite their redundancy, strangely become asource of fascination for the reader. In the desolate obscurity of this urban zone,characters are nameless and buildings are described only in terms of their

oppressive mass. The vague, multitudinous structures of the novels sprawling slumsseem therefore to precede the characters, dwarfing them, and robbing them ofidentity and consistence(translatable as either shape or consistency).

Is this image of the monotonous, impoverished city Queneaus metaphor for thesterility of the novel as a genre? In a 1937 essay entitled Technique du roman, alack of shape and consistency seems to be his main complaint about prose fiction ingeneral. Since its inception, he grumbles, the novel as a genre has escaped any andall rules regarding structure and characterization: Anyone at all can drive, like someflock of geese, an indeterminate number of characters through an indeterminatenumber of pages and chapters.[12]Queneaus response, according to Warren Motte,

is an astonishing leap of faith [which] reposes on the notion that form can save thenovel.[13]


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The suburbs in The Bark Treeare a domain of fallen people and fallen places. Notonly are they indeterminate, but they seem miserable because of it. Immuring in theirown right, these reflections of structural decay suggest the existential themes ofanother register. Such an environment is a barrier to the self-realization surelypossible anywhere but here, and the indignities suffered in this concrete labyrinth

cause many of Queneaus suburban unfortunates to suffer an incremental moraldegeneration that ends in misery and abandonment. Indeed, to inhabit this world offilth and pollution as ambiance, of anonymity and crassness as companionship, andof isolation among the multitude as destiny is to be abandoned by the beautiful andthe ideal.

Nevertheless, this destiny serves as truth for the common man, and from it arises aprocess of discovery. For even as Queneaus characters slog through this blight, notall succumb to its evils. As the focus shifts to specific structures and the events thattake place in and around them, the confining nature of these places appears to havea positive effect on their occupants. Like the carefully conceived constraints which

drive Queneaus creative process, such confinement affords a certain liberty, and weare reminded of it once again in very spatial terms. There is a potential for mobilityhidden behind these shabby confines, and it exists to a certain extent for all thecharacters as they shuttle from place to place on foot or on the train or metro. Thecrumbling, unfinished second floor of the protagonists dwelling suggests that upwardmobility, both physical and economic, is nearly impossible. However, horizontalmotion is constant, and it provides the filament of which the narrative is woven.Despite their small, cramped spaces and the social immobility such dwellings signify,this suburban landscape also offers a permeability and traversability that is perhapsless available in any other kind of place. Bernard Pingaud recognizes its inherentfreedom, suggesting that the dweller of the suburbs is neither ever truly there, nor

elsewhere, but always in-between, always to-and-fro.[14]

Queneau would certainlyagree, having once described himself as the perfect suburbanite.[15]Pingaud goeson to say that it is in this marginal locale that Queneaus oeuvre is performed,[16]thusrevealing a view of prose fiction that he reenacts in The Bark Tree.

There is, in fact, much more in store for our silhouette than the mere freedom ofhorizontal displacement. As the imagery of the suburban lieu communis punctuatedwith specific lieux-dits, the silhouette appears to be transformed by them. Gradually,its conduct becomes more reasoned as repeated situations of physical confinementare answered by its accumulating physical depth. In the beginning, the silhouette ofa man (BT7) undergoes an expansion from one dimension to two before thesqueaking, rusty door of its half-constructed house (BT11). Then, distracted by aderby filled with water in a hat-sellers window, it acquires density (BT11) and soonbecomes an entity (BT15). Transformation, confinement, and mobility now drive thenovels intrigue. Limited to a world defined only by the departure times of its trains,the entity continues to inflate, being endowed with a certain consistency whileconfined in a rush-hour railway car (BT16). Eventually, as a result or by-product ofthis expansion, it becomes a prize specimen (BT16).

At this point, translation from the original becomes an issue, because tre de choixcan also mean one with the power of choice. Either way, a process of physical andspiritual augmentation makes itself clear in both the original and the translation as thefirst chapter unfolds. Amid the fly-like specks of humanity on the railway platform, the

entity, which now displays curious shape (BT25), remains unaware of its increasingdimensions. The narrator has nevertheless granted it the status of character (BT


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24), and as the railway car becomes engorged with commuters bound for the tormentof the urban wage-slave, the being jumps into the fray.

The receptacle is closed (BT25), and under way again in thiscan of sardines, the character attains minimal reality (BT25).

From the window of this so-called receptacle, the being ofminimal realitysees theweatherboard chip hut, whose provisory structure truly underlines the marginal natureof the suburbs. Now an amateur semiologist of sorts, the being sees the signCHIPS on the hut and is amused that someone could be named Mr. Chips (BT26). Putting his newly attained power of choice into action, the being contrives a visitto the hut, whereupon he is granted his own name: tienne Marcel. Just as thewater-filled derby initiated his physical dimensionalization, so does this place givehim an identity and turn him toward the future. Identity and chronology, two of fictionsessential elements, are thus revealed. Like the novel itself, tienne finally attainstridimensional reality (BT53) in the stifling confines of another caf, and much laterstill, squashed up in his corner seat in the compartment, he learns to manipulate

concepts and plunge[s] into a series of considerations relative to the necessity ofpreliminary doubt in all philosophical inquiry (BT212).

Before proceeding to the importance of the novels various lieux-dits, it is interestingto note the sequence of physical manifestations under which the protagonist appearsin the original Chiendent(1933).[17]Because not all the spatial subtleties are noted inWrights translation, certain aspects of the protagonists physical expansion are lost.For this I offer my own, more literal, translation.

From the condition ofsilhouette (9), the protagonist undergoes a

bidimensional materialization (matrialisation bidimensionnelle, 13),

then becomes a flat being (tre plat, 15), a flat papa (papa plat, 20), a being endowed with some consistency/shape (tre dou de quelque

consistance, 24), a being of choice (tre de choix, 24), a being of remarkable form (tre de forme singulire, 36), a being of the slightest reality (tre de moindre ralit, 37), a being of minimal reality (tre de ralit minime, 48), and finally attains tridimensional reality (la ralit tridimensionnelle, 81) under the gaze of the mysterious observer.

The importance of the chip hut, especially in the early chapters, is its role in theconception ofThe Bark Trees major subplots. The rendezvous that results in thenear-hanging of Narcense, the unemployed saxophonist, the collusion betweenMadame Cloche and Ernestine to abscond with the imagined riches of Taupe, thejunk dealer, and the wedding contrived for that very purpose are all planned within itsseedy confines. This illustrates the fact that although the paradox of publictransportations confining mobility drives much of tiennes development, he andother characters draw their identity largely from the structures they inhabit. Theseimages remind us that the domicile, no matter how modest, is an enclosed space ofimmense ontological importance. What makes it unique in The Bark Treeis theconnection between the confining squalor of these dwellings and the philosophical

growth or equilibrium that their residents achieve. I already mentioned the headless(BT66) villa where tienne lives and begins his materialization. Curiously, as he


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contemplates the mental image of the water-filled derby and its properties ofimpermeability, the villas exterior walls, iron gate, and system of locks and closuresare repeatedly and carefully described. His son Tho finds its unfinished second floorto be his favorite place, watching the bricks crumble from the effects of wind andwater, as if decay and impermanence lurk on the very doorstep of structure and

confinement. Once again we might see this as surrealisms organic effort to reclaim,here under the guise of erosion, the structured space of civilization.

The ramshackle junk shop where Taupe lives,

a little corner of paradise in the middle of the hell of the Parissuburbs(BT107),

holds the very key to a fulfillment which the narrator affirms: happiness, for him,consisted in excessive security (BT85). Inside, of course, is the infamous blue door.Mounted on the inside wall of his shanty, which is built next to a railway embankment,it opens to nowhere, yet it retains Taupes memory of love, and thus his happiness.And it is in Ernestines humble room above the curiously namedCaf des habitantswhere, mysteriously dying after her and Taupes nuptial ceremonies, she gives aSocratic discourse on the meaning of life and death to fifteen cramped weddingguests. Jordan Stump sees this situation as the turning point of the novel; one wherethe accumulation of knowledge and perspective so cherished by the charactersbegins its inexorable return to zero.[18]It is an entropy that ultimately disperses somecharacters and does away with others, yet, paradoxically, it enables the novelscircular structurean orbit confirmed by the two identical sentences that begin andend the 273-page story.

Conversely, Pierre Le Grand, the other man turned observer, never seems to liveanywhere other than the beach at R (in French pronounced erre, as if from the verb

errer, to rove or wander). His existence and movement through the novel remain, likethose of the monolith in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, always a mystery, and,ultimately, he simply disappears from the narrative. Narcense, the down-and-outmusician, is the single inhabitant of an apartment building filled with emptyapartments, and, unable to pay his rent, the illegitimacy of his residence ends with hisbeing shot as a traitor (BT268). As the novel nears its end, the opsisshifts tooutdoors, and the plot disintegrates into a Monty Pythonesque parody of modernwarfare between the Gauls and the Etruscans. The remaining characters agree toliterally erase (littraturer) this episode from the novel, thus returning the reader tothe beginning: before the enormous, unbearable building (BT7).

The Bark Treenarrates the creation and definition of so much that defines humanity:being, identity, philosophy, and literature. Therefore, such constant attention tohabitat, another essential element of human existence, cannot be a coincidence. Theact of clearing and enclosing a living space is part of the way human beings definethemselves, and is essential in determining the individuals relationship with theworld.

In Citadelle, Saint-Exupry arrives at the great truth ofhumankinds inhabiting nature: that the meaning of everythingdepends on the sens[19]of his abode.

Otto Friedrich Bollnow, citing this realization, concludes that

only through inhabiting can an individual fulfill his or her truebeing. Not only does living space defineone, but it represents
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fulfillment of ones dreams, and enclosure is its primaryelement.[20]

So it goes in The Bark Tree, where confinement and enclosure confer both being andhappiness. Madame Belhtel, the hut owners wife, confirms this, dreaming out loudthat [i]n six months at the most well have our little house, our little whorehouse(BT163). Most interesting here is the authors choice of the adjective clos, closelydenoting enclosurewhile idiomatically connoting a structurein which enclosure is thestructures sole reason for existence. tienne concurs with the idea that there is moreto domestic confinement, whatever its purpose, than meets the eye:

Its a house, because people live in it, but its something elseas well (BT120).

He himself is something else, too, and here we should consider the name tienneMarcel. A glance at the Petit Larousseconfirms his namesake as the simple burgherwho, having ascended to the stature of Provost of Tradesmen in fourteenth-centuryParis, led a citizens revolt against Charles V. As one digs deeper, however, the realMarcels links to architectural enclosurebecome apparent. Entering the assembly ofthe States-General in December 1355, his charge, among others, was to maintainthe crumbling enceinte Philippe-Auguste, those enclosing ramparts built around Parisbetween 1190 and 1213. Designed to protect the city and its 190,000 inhabitantsduring this monarchs crusade, Marcel restored and expanded them to include theoutlying suburban agglomerations that had sprung up outside its walls.[21]He did soto establish and fortify his position as Matre de Paris, hoping to hold the city until hecould bring it under English control via Charles the Bad, king of Navarre. It wasduring this defensive effort that Marcel acquired the so-called Pillar-house for thepurpose of establishing the seat of Parisian municipality upon whose site was

constructed the Htel de Ville, of which he is thus considered the original founder.[22]

In Saint Glinglin, we learn that the mind only gets its wind when nature is erasedand disappears.[23]Examining Queneaus lieux communsand lieux-ditsin relation tothis fragment of Quenellian philosophy, one gains a new perspective on the meaningof architecture in his novels. Such structure is contrived by man, and, according toQueneaus prescription for spiritual significance, it does not occur in nature.Barthess architectural metaphor is well chosen, for it characterizes not only theopsesof these novels, but the novelists work itself. It is here that the last piece of thepuzzle falls into place. In the restricted spaces ofThe Bark Trees dingy metropolitanoutskirts, a series of fortunate accidents, coincidences, and arbitrary choices providethe opportunity for an act of creation. It turns out to be not just a character or an

opsis, but a novel whose very existence is conferred by spatial constraint. tienneMarcel thus becomes synonymous not only with the erection of a novel and its three-dimensional philosopher, but of the City of Lightitself and one of its most importantstructures. Inevitably, as the Htelwas destroyed in 1871s own citizen revolt,tienne himself collapses at the end ofThe Bark Tree, becoming again a meresilhouette of his former self. But the city and its suburbs remain, and the enigmaticblue door, though always closed, makes us keep the novel open, searching with thecharacters for the place to which it leads.

Queneau is the architect of an oeuvre whose debt to classical forms is one of itsprimary characteristics. In The Bark Tree, he not only reconstructs the novel as a

genre, but creates an antithesis to a surrealist ideal inspired by the organic, naturalforces he often portrays as dark and horrific. Numerous critics, including Queneau
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himself, have noted the meticulous way in which his novels are created, but, as mightbe said of any kind of edifice, their substance is no more than what is used to buildthem.[24]To this I would add that the shape and consistency of these novels and theircharacters are often determined by the very walls and structures that stand within.

As one reads more of Queneau, the confining nature of Paul Nabonides walls in

Saint Glinglineasily becomes the metaphor for the structure of writing itself, its plotand imagery recalling The Bark Trees urban sprawl by focusing primarily on its ruralopposite. On est toujours trop bon avec les femmes(1947; We Always Treat WomenToo Well, 1981) is a story of siege and imprisonment inside an Irish post office,another common, public space whose role and importance in society far surpass thephysical structure of its edifice or the individuals it serves. As an institution, the Posttruly spans the globe, and, until recently, it dominated the human effort tocommunicate outside the realm of the spoken word. Yet under the circumstances ofthe novel, the institution itself is non-existent, and the integrity of a single individualsphysical state is at issue instead. In Pierrot mon ami(1942; Pierrot, 1950), the

intrigue is driven by the opposing imagery of two incongruent worlds. The festiveatmosphere of play and deceiving appearances in an amusement park arejuxtaposed with the sobering religious iconography of a sacred shrine. Somehow, theparks boundaries enclose a chapel and a tomb that enigmatically prevent that veryparks expansion. And finally, Loin de Rueil(1944; The Skin of Dreams, 1948) iscentered on another place of public worship, the cinmatographe. Like the shrine, thecinema is also a lieu communof metaphysical transcendence, but here it serves as amechanism to blur the distinctions between reality and imagination so thoroughly thatwe come to question the very meaning of representation.

Indeed, if the imagery of enclosureis so important to these and other novels, andeven salubrious to their characters, one cannot deny a link to the classical form and

structure that were quintessential of their authors creative genius. Queneau was, asthe word architect retains from the Greek, the master builder.

NOTES

[1] Raymond Queneau, Saint Glinglin(Paris: Gallimard, 1981) 12728. Except whereotherwise noted in the article, all references are to this studys central text.References to Raymond Queneau, Le Chiendent(Paris: Gallimard, 1974) are toBarbara Wrights definitive translation, The Bark Tree(New York: New Directions,1968), hereinafter referred to as BT. Translators italics and quotes. Translations fromQueneaus other novels are my own, using modern, commonly available, French

editions. For reference, I have included the dates of first publication, first translation,and the English title, if different from the original.

[2] The date 1995 refers to the publication of Madeleine Velguths translation, whichappeared as Raymond Queneaus Chne et chien: A Translation with Commentary(New York: Peter Lang).

[3] Jean-Marie Catonn, Queneau(Paris: Belfond, 1992) 186. Translations ofsecondary sources are my own.

[4] Claude Simonnet, Queneau dchiffr (notes sur le Chiendent) (Paris: Slatkine,1981) 54.


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[5] Roland Barthes, Zazie et la littrature, Essais critiques(Paris: Seuil, 1964) 12531. Barthes sees Queneaus approach as double, the architecture of his meticulous,classical constructions always hiding an insidious nothingness within.[6] Simonnet 11.

[7] Allen Thiher, Raymond Queneau, Twaynes World Authors Series 763 (Boston:Twayne, 1985) 71.

[8] M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. (Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart,and Winston, 1993) 193. A Greek term which denotes the visible scene or picturablesetting in literature, whether it be one of theater, prose, or lyric poetry.[9] Catonn 97.[10] Catonn 101.[11] Catonn 101102.

[12] Raymond Queneau, Technique du roman, Btons, chiffres et lettres(Paris:

Gallimard, 1965) 27.[13] Warren F. Motte Jr., Raymond Queneau and the Aesthetic of FormalConstraint, Romanic Review82.2 (1991): 197.

[14] Bernard Pingaud, Le Parfait Banlieusard, LArc28 (1966): 710.

[15] Pingaud 8. For details on Queneaus various places of residence, see theexhaustive chronology in Raymond Queneau, uvres compltes, vol. 1 (Paris:Gallimard Pliade, 1989) xlilxxxi.[16] Pingaud 10.[17]

See note 1.[18] Jordan Stump, Naming and Unnaming: on Raymond Queneau(Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1998) 58.

[19] Antoine de Saint-Exupry, Citadelle(Paris: Gallimard, 1948) 26. It should benoted that senscan be translated as sense, direction, or meaning.

[20] Otto Friedrich Bollnow, Hombre y espacio, trans. Jaime Lpez de Asiain y Martn(Barcelona: Labor, 1969) 119.

[21] M. Guizot & Madame Guizot de Witt, France, trans. Robert Black, vol. 2 (NewYork: Collier & Son, 1900) 11627.

[22] F.T. Perrens, tienne Marcel: prvt des marchands, Histoire gnrale de Paris(Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1874) 389.

[23]Queneau, Saint Glinglin129.

[24] Jacques Guicharnaud, Raymond Queneau, trans. June Guicharnaud (New York:Columbia University Press, 1965) 24.

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