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I don’t read a lot of critical/academic books, but I can’t wait to get my hands on Daniel Levin Becker’s Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, which is coming out from Harvard University Press next month:

What sort of society could bind together Jacques Roubaud, Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp, and Raymond Queneau���Ĵ�ý�and Daniel Levin Becker, a young American obsessed with language play? Only the Oulipo, the Paris-based experimental collective founded in 1960 and fated to become one of literature���Ĵ�ý�s quirkiest movements.

An international organization of writers, artists, and scientists who embrace formal and procedural constraints to achieve literature���Ĵ�ý�s possibilities, the Oulipo (the French acronym stands for ���Ĵ�ý�workshop for potential literature���Ĵ�ý�) is perhaps best known as the cradle of Georges Perec���Ĵ�ý�s novel A Void, which does not contain the letter e. Drawn to the Oulipo���Ĵ�ý�s mystique, Levin Becker secured a Fulbright grant to study the organization and traveled to Paris. He was eventually offered membership, becoming only the second American to be admitted to the group. From the perspective of a young initiate, the Oulipians and their projects are at once bizarre and utterly compelling. Levin Becker���Ĵ�ý�s love for games, puzzles, and language play is infectious, calling to mind Elif Batuman���Ĵ�ý�s delight in Russian literature in The Possessed.

And with coming out from Dalkey Archive coming out this spring as well, it’s as good a time as any to go on an Oulipian bender. . . .