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| A to Z Challenge Here |
One thing I love about doing the A to Z Blogging Challenge,
is that it challenges me to come up with new things. I like to have a theme and
always find that I learn so much because though I might have lots of ideas in
mind, when I start writing the posts I have to research each one to find
information that might be interesting to others. Invariably it teaches me
things I didn’t know about the subject. It also makes me look for new things to
write about because, let’s face it, Q, X, Y and Z are not easy to find subjects
about!
An example is this post about French author Raymond Queneau.
When looking for a “Z” to write about I found Zazie, and in reading about her I
found she’d been nicknamed Zazie because she reminded her parents of the
character in Raymond Queneau’s novel, “Zazie in the Metro” (Zazie dans Le Metro
1959). I watched the trailer for the movie (1960) and got an idea of why the
singer Zazie was given that nickname, especially when you see how sassy she can be.
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| Raymond Queneau, author, looking serious |
I then wanted to know more about Raymond Queneau as a writer. He seems to have been a man like any other, ups and downs with a good work ethic.
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| RQ looking not quite so serious |
I went on to find some of his quotes on Goodreads.
Here are a few. They speak more to the writer he was than
I ever can…
“Being or nothing, that is the question.
Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he
disappears.”
― Zazie in the Metro
― Zazie in the Metro
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| Zazie book cover |
“I don't know how long I stayed in that
particular place my poor memory is not a chronometer nor a movie camera nor a
phonograph nor any other sort of finely tuned machine. It's more like nature
with holes empty spaces hidden nooks and crannies with rivers that trickle away
so that you can never dip your foot in the same water twice and with patches of
light and darkness.”
―
―
“He wanted to be content with an identity nicely
chopped into pieces of varying lengths, but whose character was always similar,
without dyeing it in autumnal colors, drenching it in April showers or mottling
it with the instability of clouds.”
―
―
“The only advantage he could see in the change
was that he had a small desk in his room; his capacity for isolation was
thereby increased. But none of this changed his life very much. He continued
his games of billiards and his reading. And was periodically overwhelmed by
abominable fits of despair from which he was abruptly extricated by a
ridiculous but stubborn optimism, an absurd love of life.”
― The Last Days
― The Last Days
“–Alors tu t’es bien amusée ? (So,
did you have fun?)
–Comme ça. (So so.)
–T’as vu le métro ? (Did you see the metro?)
–Non. (No.)
–Alors, qu’est-ce que t’as fait ? (So what did you do?)
–J’ai vieilli” (I got older.)
― Zazie in the Metro
–Comme ça. (So so.)
–T’as vu le métro ? (Did you see the metro?)
–Non. (No.)
–Alors, qu’est-ce que t’as fait ? (So what did you do?)
–J’ai vieilli” (I got older.)
― Zazie in the Metro
A trailer for Zazie Dans le Metro the film
Missed some of my A to Z 2019 posts? Well look no further...
Images from:
I love Raymond Queneau! Do you know about combinatorial poetry? Or OuLiPo? It's all about writing with constraints: Georges Perec wrote a book without one "e" for example. Lot of fun to make as exercice!
ReplyDeleteIn the second to last quote, the bit about " an absurd love of life" YES! So much Yes.
ReplyDelete