Raymond Queneau
| Raymond Queneau | |
|---|---|
| Born |
21 February 1903 Le Havre, France |
| Died | 25 October 1976 (aged 73) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, Poet |
| Nationality | French |
| Education | University of Paris |
|
|
|
| Signature |  |
Raymond Queneau (French: [ʁɛmɔ̃ kəno]; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, and co-founder of Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle), notable for his wit and cynical humour.
Queneau was born in Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot. He received his first baccalauréat in 1919 for Latin and Greek, and a second in 1920 for philosophy, then studied at the Sorbonne (1921–23), where he was a fair student of both letters and mathematics, graduating with certificates in philosophy and psychology.
Queneau performed military service as a zouave in Algeria and Morocco during the years 1925–26. He was drafted in 1939 after Germany's invasion of Poland, and was demobilized in 1940. Through the remainder of World War II, he and his family lived with the painter Élie Lascaux in Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat.
He married Janine Kahn in 1928, with whom he had a son, Jean-Marie, in 1934. They remained married until Janine's death in 1972.
Queneau spent much of his life working for the Gallimard publishing house, where he began as a reader in 1938. He later rose to be general secretary and eventually became director of l'Encyclopédie de la Pléiade in 1956. During some of this time, he also taught at l'École Nouvelle de Neuilly. He entered the Collège de ‘Pataphysique in 1950, where he became Satrap.
During this time, Queneau also acted as a translator, notably for Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (L'Ivrogne dans la brousse) in 1953. Additionally, he edited and published Alexandre Kojève's lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Queneau had been a student of Kojève during the 1930s and was, during this period, also close to writer Georges Bataille.
...
Wikipedia