OPEN STACKS | #39 In Search of French Lit: Alison James, Kit Schluter, & Adam Hocker

This week on Open Stacks, French literature is upon our tongue. University of Chicago professor Alison James talks Oulipo, Kit Schluter on translating Marcel Schwob into English, and bookseller Adam Hocker welcomes us to Albertine, New York's premier French bookstore.

Step into the store to see our new French Corner, created in partnership with Albertine (pictured above), and read up on the endeavor and find book recommendations here.

The meeting starts at six o’clock. Today it’s at A’s house. For ten minutes, B, C, and D (including me), who are always early, wait in front of the door. Once everyone has entered and settled in, the President draws up the agenda, noting the names of those present and those excused (but only among the living Oulipians, the others are definitively excused “for reason of death”), including E and F who don’t come very often. We help ourselves to pre-dinner drinks. As in a family, we share our news with each other (illnesses, joys, deaths). G makes a play on words. We quiet down while the President signs Oulipians up for the “Creation” section: the rule says that, if no one signs up for this section, the meeting is cancelled. In March 2016, we’re up to the 665th meeting, and this has never happened… H and I, who are always late, arrive. J doesn’t drink alcohol, K prefers root beer, everyone has a glass in hand. The meeting begins. L is the one presenting a creation. Tradition requires that we continually interrupt the presentation to complain about the presenter’s never-ending sentences.

Mathematician Michèle Audin wrote about her experiences in the Oulipo group, translated here by Christiana Hills.

More Scwhob is on the way, with a new translation of his 1896 novella The Children's Crusade, set to be released in just a few weeks from Wakefield Press. You can preorder it at the link below. Loving words about the original from Rainer Marie Rilke: “I’ve just read Marcel Schwob’s The Children’s Crusade twice over, with deep admiration and reverence. I am profoundly moved: what a work! And to think I’d never heard the name of Marcel Schwob. Who is he?”

The Albertine Prize is, as Hocker mentioned, reader selected. click here to view the shortlist and find the books on our shelves if you haven't read them yet!