Greetings, literature-loving dharma bums! Last week we traveled to contemporary Japan to rub elbows with bestselling pseudo-surrealist author Haruki Murakami. This week I’m taking a slightly different tack than usual and profiling a group rather than an individual author.
Did you ever wish you could break free from the constraints of language and literature and simply express yourself purely? Well, one group of mid-20th century writers would tell you that’s nonsense, and we’re bound by more constraints than we even realize. In fact, why not pile on more!
Sound crazy? Then let me introduce you to the wickedly funny, darkly screwball, surprisingly warm group of radical theorists who started meeting in France in the 1960s: the Oulipo.