Saint Glinglin     by Raymond Queneau, Translated by James Sallis Original title: Saint Glinglin Original language: French Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: February 1, 2000 Format: Paperback, 184 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.62 x 8.52 x 5.58 ISBN: 1564782301 List Price: $11.95, £11.95 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide Published by Dalkey Archive Press Pub. Date: 1993 Pub. Place: UK Format: 200 pages List Price: £14.00 Not available for ordering

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Saint Glinglin is a tragicomic masterpiece, a novel that critic Vivian Mercier said "can be mentioned without incongruity in the company" of Mann's Magic Mountain and Joyce's Ulysses. "By turns strange, beautiful, ludicrous, and intellectually stimulating" (as Mercier goes on to say), Saint Glinglin retells the primal Freudian myth of sons killing the father in an array of styles ranging from direct narrative, soliloquy, and interior monologue to quasi-biblical verse.

In this strange tale of a land where it never rains, where a bizarre festival is held every Saint Glinglin's Day, Queneau deploys fractured syntax, hidden structures, self-impo sed constraints, playful allusions, and puns and neologisms to explore the most basic concepts of culture. In the process, Queneau satirizes anthropology, folklore, philosophy, and epistemology, all the while spinning a story as appealing as a fairy tale.

"A beguiling wackiness laced with mysteries . . . Saint Exupery's Little Prince could be recounting Finnegans Wake.—Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

"An amalgam of the anthropological and the archetypal, leavened with sex, slapstick, wordplay and philosophical investigations. James Sallis's translation is deft and accurate, his English dotted with felicities."—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World

"Consider what you get here: references too and satires of mythology and Freudian psychology, varied narrative styles, including soliloquy, interior monologue, verse, and third person. A lot of laughs. Discussions of serious philosophical issues which are thought-provoking even when hilarious. All in one slim volume."— Austin Chronicle

"[Queneau's] inventive way with words is at its wildest here. Like all his fiction, it is so blissfully fizzy that the reader may scarcely notice its complexity."—New Yorker

"Wondrous."—Bill Marx, Boston Phoenix

"Replete with characters just this side of lunacy yet touchingly human. . . . The plot is fantastical but interwoven with enough threads of reality to keep the reader turning pages."—Library Journal

"A carnival ride of surprises and pleasures."—Kirkus

"For readers willing to relax demands for credibility and logic, Queneau's funny, philosophical nonsense is addictive. . . . Described in brief, Queneau may seem a fearsome read, but in situ he is a gentle, playful guide."— Publishers Weekly

"Sometimes hilarious and sometimes—as in its central story of sons dr iving their corrupt father to his death—as powerful as Greek tragedy. . . . Queneau's play with language begs for comparisons with Joyce, and the undercurrents of ancient and modern mythology (particularly those cooked up by Freud) are perfectly integrat ed. This, in short, is literature."—Stuart Whitwell, Booklist

"Queneau's stylistic playfulness in fact constitutes a striking image of the multivariousness of the world."—John Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle

"A remarkable work of fiction . . . It can be mentioned without incongruity in the company of those tragicomic masterpieces [as The Magic Mountain or Ulysses] . . . Saint Glinglin is by turns strange, beautiful, ludicrous, and intellectually stimulating.—Vivian Mercier, The New Novel

"An intellectu al comedy whose scope of reference includes most of Western anthropological thought and the myths that this anthropology has highlighted in its attempt to understand the nature of culture. . . . At the heart of Queneau's travesty is a questioning of the b asic conceptuality with which we think about culture and nature, biology and anthropology."—Allen Thiher, Raymond Queneau

"I wrote . . . novels with this idea of rhythm, this intention of making a sort of poem out of the novel. It is possible to make situ ations or characters rhyme together just as one makes words rhyme; it is even possible to content oneself with mere alliteration. . . . To sum up, I have never seen any essential differences between the kind of novels I want to write and poetry."—Raymond Queneau, Batons, Chiffres et Lettres

"The appearance of a translation of a novel published 50 years ago is a genuine pleasure. . . . This novel demonstrates his talent at its most tragicomic. . . . The translator has done a superb job of making this hilar ious, serious, and all-but-untranslatable masterpiece available to the English language public."—Choice

"The translator never seems to run out of breath in his effort to keep up with his author. He recreates many of Queneau's untranslatable effects, prod ucing some inspired puns of his own, such as the "x"-less word 'hicksistence' for the life of country people."—Sophia Stone, New Orleans Times-Picayune

"Queneau is a formalist who always has fun. A balance of craft and playfulness is in fact his definiti on of both art and science. His work embodies the 'gallic spirit' at its best: mocking, critical, sceptical toward the BIG questions, ironic, humorous, parodistic. It is also full of slapstick comedy and wild imagination. And, he does not take himself too seriously ('no statement is true unless accompanied by its contrary, which is also true')."—Rosmarie Waldrop, Translation Review