Carnal Love

This first English translation of one of Queneau's early important works, Les Enfants du limon (1938), offers an excellent example of his stylistic range and the depth of his erudition. The novel follows clusters of characters from the town of La Ciotat near Paris, whose lives, and bloodlines, intersect in playfully absurd ways. Various members of the Claye-Chambernac-Hachamoth clan, wealthy descendants of the man who developed the wireless radio, serve as employers and the source of gossip to members of the local laboring class, such as the Italian grocer Gramigni, hunchbacked maid Clemence and ambitious ne'er-do-well Robert Bossu, who are all rewarded in the end for their loyalty by somehow becoming related to the eventually ruined family. However, Queneau is primarily concerned with the massive opus-in-progress pursued by one branch member, M. Chambernac, a school principal who has taken on the shady secretary Purpulan to research and write The Encyclopedia of the Inexact Sciences. (In fact, this was a work Queneau had hoped himself to publish, though he never did.) There are lengthy swaths quoted from the research and, rather than being tedious digressions, these excerpts from the so-called literary lunatics upstage the rest of the novel completely. Yet overall, in this thorough translation, which preserves the author's wordplay and whimsical punctuation, Queneau shows himself a master of realistic, deadpan dialogue and characterization. (July)