The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Children of Clay, by Raymond Queneau
reviewed by Marc Lowenthal

Untitled document

Trans. Madeleine Velguth. Sun & Moon, 1998. 434 pp. Paper: $14.95.

Raymond Queneau’s fifth novel is best known for being the outcome of his lengthy research into the obscure works of French nineteenth-century “literary lunatics”: writers, philosophers, cosmologists and amateur mathematicians whose misguided ideas never succeeded in finding an audience. While such a collection would appear to be of particular interest today given the enthusiasm for raw art and post-postmodern displays of inspiration, Queneau’s anthology never succeeded in finding a publisher in the 1930s, so he instead sowed these discoveries into this Depression-era novel, chronicling the Claye family’s plunge from riches to rags. These motley and interwoven characters include a handful of grocers and servants, a satirically reactionary political group typical of the ’30s, and, at the forefront, the research on literary lunatics undertaken by the curious master/slave dialectic of the purulent Purpulan and Chambernac, a retired professor who would bear comparison with Queneau if it wasn’t for the fact that Queneau himself turns up as a character.

Craftsman that he was, Queneau managed to make all these characters tie into the novel’s multiple allegories of megalomania and regeneration, but one cannot help but feel that Children of Clay would ultimately have served better as two books, with his original, unrecycled anthology of lunatics standing on its own. Perhaps not the best novel with which the newcomer to Queneau should start, Children of Clay has nevertheless been a crucial absence from his presence in English, an absence due at least in part to the translation difficulties which the book must have posed (lunatics don’t always make for lucid writing). However, Madeleine Velguth, whose inventive rendition of Queneau’s Chêne et Chien slipped by unnoticed a few years ago, has done an admirable job, and her own appendix of Queneau’s lunatics is in itself an invaluable bibliography.


Interview with Founder Board of Directors Funders Submission Guidelines Dalkey Archive Full Catalog Current and Forthcoming Titles Recent Titles Review of Contemporary Fiction Special Library Offer Special Backlist Sale Stores & Wholesalers Academics Libraries Reviewers Context Casebooks Author Interviews Links Dalkey Archive News Events Newsletter

The Review of Contemporary Fiction Children of Clay, by Raymond Queneau reviewed by Marc Lowenthal Untitled document Trans. Madeleine Velguth. Sun & Moon, 1998. 434 pp. Paper: $14.95. Raymond Queneau’s fifth novel is best known for being the outcome of his lengthy research into the obscure works of French nineteenth-century “literary lunatics”: writers, philosophers, cosmologists and amateur mathematicians whose misguided ideas never succeeded in finding an audience. While such a collection would appear to be of particular interest today given the enthusiasm for raw art and post-postmodern displays of inspiration, Queneau’s anthology never succeeded in finding a publisher in the 1930s, so he instead sowed these discoveries into this Depression-era novel, chronicling the Claye family’s plunge from riches to rags. These motley and interwoven characters include a handful of grocers and servants, a satirically reactionary political group typical of the ’30s, and, at the forefront, the research on literary lunatics undertaken by the curious master/slave dialectic of the purulent Purpulan and Chambernac, a retired professor who would bear comparison with Queneau if it wasn’t for the fact that Queneau himself turns up as a character. Craftsman that he was, Queneau managed to make all these characters tie into the novel’s multiple allegories of megalomania and regeneration, but one cannot help but feel that Children of Clay would ultimately have served better as two books, with his original, unrecycled anthology of lunatics standing on its own. Perhaps not the best novel with which the newcomer to Queneau should start, Children of Clay has nevertheless been a crucial absence from his presence in English, an absence due at least in part to the translation difficulties which the book must have posed (lunatics don’t always make for lucid writing). However, Madeleine Velguth, whose inventive rendition of Queneau’s Chêne et Chien slipped by unnoticed a few years ago, has done an admirable job, and her own appendix of Queneau’s lunatics is in itself an invaluable bibliography.

Search the full text of our books: