Published originally as the purported French translation of a novel by fictional Irish writer Sally Mara, We Always Treat Women too Well is set in Dublin during the 1916 Easter Rising and tells the story of the siege of a small post office by a group of rebels, who discover to their embarrassment that a female postal clerk, Gertie Girdle, is still in the lavatory some time after they have shot or expelled the rest of the staff. The events that follow are not for prudish readers, forming a scintillating, linguistically delightful and hilarious narrative. By far Queneau's bawdiest work, We Always Treat Women too Well contains all of its author's hallmarks: wit, stylistic innovation and formal playfulness - expertly rendered into English by Barbara Wright's classic translation.
In late nineteenth-century Paris, the writer Hubert is shocked to discover that Icarus, the protagonist of the new novel he's working on, has vanished. Looking for him among the manuscripts of his rivals does not solve the mystery, so a detective is hired to find the runaway character, who is now in Montparnasse, where he learns to drink absinthe and is picked up by a friendly prostitute.These hilarious adventures make Queneau's novel, presented in the form of a script and parodying various genres, one of the best literary jokes in modern literature.
Nos Exercicios de estilo, que verqueron para o galego os prestixiosos traductores Henrique Harguindey e Xosé Manuel Pazos, o autor pon sobre a escena todo un coro de personaxes que interpreta, a modo de composicion musical, a mesma corta anecdota contada de 99 maneiras distintas. Rexistros idiomaticos, xeneros literarios, xogos de palabras, situacions persoais, perspectivas narrativas, recursos estilisticos, niveis sociais e outros diferentes enfoques mesturanse e organizanse nunha obra que seria errado considerar coma unha simple proeza linguistica, unha pura demitificacion literaria ou un mero virtuosismo compositivo.En palabras do traductor, Henrique Harguindey:Estando presentes a creacion verbal, a enxeñeria matematica, o retrato social, o distanciamento expositivo e tantos outros ingredientes, o conxunto forma unha obra superior, que ten como resultado o que autor queria conseguir: "desincrutar a literatura das suas diferentes ferruxes, das suas costras, desincrustar a literatura das cousas futiles que con frecuencia non vemos".A traves destes Exercicios de estilo, Quenau destripa a linguaxe para examinar o seu funcionamento desarticulando e articulando as suas pezas. E sobre todo, xoga e ri. Porque quere poñer de manifesto que a linguaxe e unha fonte de pracer. Que a lingua, a par doutras funcions, ten tamen unha funcion ludica.
