- Date added
-
March 15, 2023, 12:21 p.m.
- Description
- The front end of the story is this: Michael first met me at some conference, shortly after the publication of Higher-Order Perl, and people were coming up to me and presenting me with copies of the book to sign. In many cases these were people who had helped me edit the book, or who had reported printing errors; for some of those people I would find the error in the text that they had reported, circle it, and write a thank-you note on the same page. Michael did not have a copy of my book, but for some reason he had with him a copy of Oulipo Compendium, and he presented this to me to sign instead.
Oulipo is a society of writers, founded in 1960, who pursue “constrained writing”. Perhaps the best-known example is the lipogrammatic novel La Disparition, written in 1969 by Oulipo member Georges Perec, entirely without the use of the letter e. Another possibly well-known example is the Exercises in Style of Raymond Queneau, which retells the same vapid anecdote in 99 different styles. The book that Michael put in front of me to sign is a compendium of anecdotes, examples of Oulipan work, and other Oulipalia.
What Michael did not realize, however, was that the gods of fate were handing me an opportunity. He says that I glared at him for a moment, then flipped through the pages, found the place in the book where I was mentioned, circled it, and signed that.
The other half of that story is how I happened to be mentioned in Oulipo Compendium.
