Exercises in Style

by Raymond Queneau

  About two hours later coincidences are peculiar he was in the Cour de Rome with a friend a fancy-pants of his own sort who was pointing with his index finger to a button on his overcoat what on earth can he be telling him?

  arechesis

  On the butt-end of a bulging bus which was transbustling an abundance of incubuses and Buchmanites from bumbledom towards their bungalows, a bumptious buckeen whose buttocks were remote from his bust and who was buttired in a boody ridiculous busby, buddenly had a bust-up with a robust buckra who was bumping into him: “Buccaneer, buzz off, you’re butting my bunions!” Rebuffed, he did a bunk.

  But bussequently I buheld him with a buckish buddy who was busuading him to budge a button on his bum-freezer.

  pectral

  We, gamekeeper of the Monceau Plain, have the honour to report the inexplicable and malignant presence in the neighbourhood of the oriental gate of the Park, property of his Royal Highness Monsieur Philippe, the invested Duke of Orleans, this sixteenth day of May one thousand seven hundred and eighty three, of a felt hat of an unwonted shape and encircled by a sort of plaited cord. We subsequently observed the sudden apparition under the said hat of a man who was young, endowed with a neck of an extraordinary length, and dressed how they dress, doubtless, in China. The appalling aspect of this individual froze our blood and prevented our flight. This individual remained immobile for several instants, and then began to make agitated movements, muttering the while, as if pushing aside other individuals in his vicinity who were invisible but perceptible to him. Suddenly he transferred his attention to his cloak and we heard him murmuring as follows: “A button is missing, a button is missing.” Then he started to move and took the direction of the Nursery Garden. Attracted in spite of ourself by the strangeness of this phenomenon, we followed him out of the confines attributed to our jurisdiction and we all three, we, the individual and the hat, reached a deserted little garden, which was planted with cabbages. A blue sign of unknown but certainly diabolical origin bore the inscription “Cour de Rome”. The individual continued to move about for some moments, murmuring: “He tried to tread on my toes.” Then he disappeared, first himself, and, some time after, his hat. Having drawn up a report of this liquidation, I went to have a drink at the Little Poland.

  hilosophic

  Great cities alone can provide phenomenological spirituality with the essentialities of temporal and improbabilistic coincidences. The philosopher who occasionally ascends into the futile and utilitarian inexistentiality of an S bus can perceive therein with the lucidity of his pineal eye the transitory and faded appearance of a profane consciousness afflicted by the long neck of vanity and the hatly plait of ignorance. This matter, void of true entelechy, occasionally plunges into the categorical imperative of its recriminatory life force against the neo-Berkleyan unreality of a corporeal mechanism unburdened by conscience. This moral attitude then carries the more unconscious of the two towards a void spatiality where it disintegrates into its primary and crooked elements.

  Philosophical research is then pursued normally by the fortuitous but anagogic encounter of the same being accompanied by its inessential and sartorial replica, which is noumenally advising it to transpose on the level of the understanding the concept of overcoat button situated sociologically too low.

  postrophe

  O platinum-nibbed stylograph, let thy smooth and rapid course trace on this single-side calendered paper those alphabetic glyphs which shall transmit to men of sparkling spectacles the narcissistic tale of a double encounter of omnibusilistic cause. Proud courser of my dreams, faithful camel of my literary exploits, lissome fountain of words counted, weighed and chosen, describe thou those lexicographic and syntactic curves which shall graphically create the futile and ridiculous narration of the life and opinions of that young man who one day took the S bus without suspecting that he would become the immortal hero of the present writer’s laborious toil. O coxcomb with thy plait-girdled hat projecting over thy long neck, O cross-grained, choleric and pusillanimous cur who, fleeing the skirmish, wentest to place thy behind, harvester of kicks on the arse, on a bench of hardened wood, didst thou suspect this thy rhetorical destiny whilst, before the gare Saint-Lazare, thou wast listening with exalted ear to the tailoring counsel of a personage inspired by the uppermost button of thine overcoat?

  wkward

  I’m not used to writing. I dunno. I’d quite like to write a tragedy or a sonnet or an ode, but there’s the rules. They put me off. They weren’t made for amateurs. All this is already pretty badly written. Oh well. At any rate, I saw something today which I’d like to set down in writing. Set down in writing doesn’t seem all that marvellous to me. It’s probably one of those ready-made expressions which are objected to by the readers who read for the publishers who are looking for the originality which they seem to think is necessary in the manuscripts which the publishers publish when they’ve been read by the readers who object to ready-made expressions like “to set down in writing” which all the same is what I should like to do about something I saw today even though I’m only an amateur who is put off by the rules of the tragedy the sonnet or the ode because I’m not used to writing. Hell, I don’t know how I did it but here I am right back at the beginning again. I’ll never get to the end. So what. Let’s take the bull by the horns. Another platitude. And anyway there was nothing of the bull about that chap. Huh, that’s not bad. If I were to write: let’s take the fancy-pants by the plait of his felt hat which hat is conjugated with a long neck, that might well be original. That might well get me in with the gentlemen of the French Academy, the Café Flore and the Librairie Gallimard. Why shouldn’t I make some progress, after all. It’s by writing that you become a writesmith. That’s a good one. Have to keep a sense of proportion, though. The chap on the bus platform had lost his when he started to swear at the man next to him claiming that the latter trod on his toes every time he squeezed himself up to let passengers get on or off. All the more so as after he’d protested in this fashion he went off quickly enough to sit down as soon as he’d spotted a free seat inside as if he was afraid of getting hit. Hm, I’ve got through half my story already. Wonder how I did it. Writing’s really quite pleasant. But there’s still the most difficult part left. The part where you need the most know-how. The transition. All the more so as there isn’t any transition. I’d rather stop here.

  asual

  I

  I get on the bus.

  “Is this right for the Porte Champerret?”

  “Cantcher read?”

  “Pardon.”

  He grinds my tickets on his stomach.

  “Ee yar.”

  “Thanks.”

  I look around me.

  “I say, you.”

  He has a sort of cord round his hat.

  “Can’t you look what you’re doing?”

  He has a very long neck.

  “Oh look here, I say.”

  Now he’s rushing to get a free seat.

  “Well well.”

  I say that to myself.

  II

  I get in the bus.

  “Is this right for the Place de la Contrescarpe?”

  “Cantcher read?”

  “Pardon.”

  His barrel organ functions and gives me back my tickets with a little tune on them.

  “Ee yar.’

  “Thanks.”

  We pass the gare Saint-Lazare.

  “Hm, there’s the chap I saw before.”

  I incline an ear.

  “You ought to get another button put on your overcoat.”

  He shows him where.

  “Your overcoat is cut too low.”

  That’s true enough.

  “Well well.”

  I say that to myself.

  iased

  After an inordinate delay the bus at last turned the corner and pulled up alongside the pavement. A few people got off, a few others got on. I was among the latter. I got shoved on to the platform, t
he conductor vehemently pulled a noise-plug and the vehicle started off again. While I was engaged in tearing out of a little book the number of tickets that the man with the little box was about to obliterate on his stomach, I started to inspect my neighbours. Nothing but males around me. No women. A disinterested look, then. I soon discovered the cream of this surrounding mud: a boy of about twenty who wore a little head on a long neck and a large hat on his little head and a pretty little plait round his large hat.

  What a ghastly type, I said to myself.

  He wasn’t only a ghastly type, he was a quarrelsome one as well. He worked himself up into a state of indignation and accused a perfectly ordinary citizen of laminating his feet every time a passenger went by getting on or off. The other fellow looked at him severely, trying to find an aggressive retort in the ready-made repertory that he no doubt lugged around with him through the varying circumstances of Life, but he was somewhat out of his depth that day. As for the young man, he was afraid he was going to get his face slapped, so he took advantage of the sudden liberation of a seat by precipitating himself upon it and sitting on it.

  I got off before he did and couldn’t continue to observe his behaviour. I was deciding to condemn him to oblivion when, two hours later, me in the bus, him on the pavement, I saw him in the Cour de Rome, looking just as deplorable.

  He was walking up and down in the company of a friend who must have been his arbiter of elegance and who was advising him, with dandyesque pedantry, to reduce the space between the lapels of his overcoat by having a supplementary button united to it.

  What a ghastly type, I said to myself.

  Then the two of us, my bus and I, continued on our way.

  onnet

  Glabrous was his dial and plaited was his bonnet,

  And he, a puny colt—(how sad the neck he bore,

  And long)—was now intent on his quotidian chore—

  The bus arriving full, of somehow getting on it.

  One came, a number ten—or else perhaps an S,

  Its platform, small adjunct of this plebeian carriage,

  Was crammed with such a mob as to preclude free passage;

  Rich bastards lit cigars upon it, to impress.

  The young giraffe described so well in my first strophe,

  Having got on the bus, started at once to curse an

  Innocent citizen—(he wanted an easy trophy

  But got the worst of it.) Then, spying a vacant place,

  Escaped thereto. Time passed. On the way back, a person

  Was telling him that a button was just too low in space.

  lfactory

  In that meridian S, apart from the habitual smell, there was a smell of a beastly seedy ego, of effrontery, of jeering, of H-bombs, of a high jakes, of cakes and ale, of emanations, of opium, of curious ardent esquimos, of tumescent venal double-usurers, of extraordinary white zoosperms, there was a certain scent of long juvenile neck, a certain perspiration of plaited cord, a certain pungency of anger, a certain loose and constipated stench, which were so unmistakeable that when I passed the gare Saint-Lazare two hours later I recognised them and identified them in the cosmetic, modish and tailoresque perfume which emanated from a badly placed button.

  ustatory

  This particular bus had a certain taste. Curious, but undeniable. All buses don’t have the same taste. That’s often said, but it’s true. Just try the experiment. This one—an S, not to make too great a mystery of it—had the suspicion of a flavour of grilled peanuts, not to go into too great detail. The platform had its own special bouquet, peanuts not just grilled but trodden as well. One metre 60 above the trampolin, a gourmand, only there wasn’t one there, would have been able to taste something rather sourish which was the neck of a man of about thirty. And twenty centimetres higher still, the refined palate was offered the rare opportunity of sampling a plaited cord just slightly tinged with the flavour of cocoa. Next we sampled the chewing gum of dispute, the chestnuts of irritation, the grapes of wrath and a bunch of bitterness.

  Two hours later we were entitled to the dessert: an overcoat button . . . a real delicacy.

  actile

  Buses are soft to the touch especially if you take them between the thighs and caress them with both hands, from the head towards the tail, from the engine towards the platform. But when you find yourself on this platform, then you perceive something rougher and harsher which is the bar or hand-rail, and sometimes something rounder and more elastic which is a buttock. Sometimes there are two of these and then you put the sentence into the plural. You can also take hold of a tubular, palpitating object that disgurgitates idiotic sounds, or even a utensil with plaited spirals that are softer than a rosary, silkier than barbed wire, more velvety than rope, and slenderer than a cable. Or your finger can even touch human clottishness, slightly viscous and gummy on account of the heat.

  Then if you are patient for an hour or two, in front of a bumpy station you can dip your tepid hand into the exquisite freshness of a vegetable ivory button which is not in its right place.

  isual

  The general effect is green with a white top, oblong, with windows. ’Tisn’t as easy as all that to do windows. The platform isn’t any colour, it’s half grey half brown if it must be something. The most important thing is it’s full of curves, lots of esses as you might say. But the way it is at midday, rush hour, it’s an extraordinary mess. To get somewhere near it you’d have to extract from the magma a light ochre rectangle, put a light ochre oval on top, and then on top of that again, stick a darkish ochre hat which you’d encircle with a plait of burnt Siena, all mixed-up, at that. Then you’d shove in a patch the colour of duck’s muck to represent fury, a red triangle to express anger, and just a pissworth of green to portray suppressed bile and squittery funk.

  After that you’d draw one of those sweet darling little navy blue overcoats and, near the top of it, just below the opening, you’d put a darling little button drawn with great precision and loving care.

  uditory

  Quacking and letting off, the S came rasping to a halt alongside the silent pavement. The sun’s trombone flattened the midday note. The pedestrians, bawling bagpipes, shouted out their numbers. Some went up a semitone, which sufficed to carry them off towards the Porte Champerret with its chanting arcades. Among the panting élite was a clarinet tube to whom the untowardness of the times had given human form, and the perversity of a hatmaker had given to wear on the coconut an instrument which resembled a guitar that might perhaps have plaited its strings together to make a girdle. Suddenly in the middle of some minor arrangements between enterprising passengers and consenting passengeresses and of bleating tremolos from the covetous conductor, a ludicrous cacophony broke out in which the fury of the double bass was blended with the irritation of the trumpet and the jitters of the bassoon.

  Then, after sigh, silence, pause and double pause, there rang forth the triumphant melody of a button in the process of going up an octave.

  elegraphic

  BUS CROWDED STOP YNGMAN LONGNECK PLAITENCIRCLED HAT APOSTROPHISES UNKNOWN PASSENGER UNAPPARENT REASON STOP QUERY FINGERS FEET HURT CONTACT HEEL ALLEGED PURPOSELY STOP YNGMAN ABANDONS DISCUSSION PRO-VACANT SEAT STOP 1400 HOURS PLACE ROME YNGMAN LISTENS SARTORIAL ADVICE FRIEND STOP MOVE BUTTON STOP SIGNED ARCTURUS

  de

  O in the bus

  O in the bin

  th ’yomnibus S

  th ’yomnibussin

  which with percuss

  and hellish din

  goes on its way

  with us within

  nearth’ Pare Monceau

  nearth’ Pare Monsin

  in the sun’s glow

  in the sun’s glin

  Monsieur André

  whose neck’s too thin

  wears a hatuss

  wears a hatin

  in th ’yomnibus

  in th ’yomnibin

  And this hatuss

  and this hatin

  is ri
bbonless

  is ribbonlin

  in th ’yomnibus

  in th ’yomnibin

  and what is muss

  and what is min

  there’s an excess

  of bods therein

  and this André

  whose neck’s too thin

  starts to inveigh

  starts to invin

  against a cuss

  against a kin

  in th ’yomnibus

  in th ’yomnibin

  but this same cuss

  but this same kin

  za bit too tuss

  za bit too tin

  and says his say

  and says his sin

  on th ’yomnibus

  on th ’yomnibin

  and our André

  whose neck’s too thin

  goes by express

  goes by exprin

  in the bus S

  in the bussin

  a seat to let

  his arse sink in

  A seat I’d let

  my arse sink in

  I the poet

  gay Harlequin

  and two hours

  after I saw him

  at Saint-Lazare

  at Saint-Lazin

  the station? yeah

  so spick and spin

  him, that’s André

  whose neck’s too thin

  I heard him say

  “O pardon min

  my dear old pay

  my dear old pin

  for my buttuss

  for my buttin”

  quite near the bus

  quite near the bin

  Now if by

  chancetmy tale you grin

  since happiness

  was born a twin

  then take no restand