Manifestos and A Void

Francois Le Lionnais’ First and Second Manifestos seemed to directly call out my initial reaction to the lipogrammatic form and other literary structures pursued by the Oulipo. Lionnais states something very similar to how I felt about these seemingly indulgent constraints, saying that most readers find these forms to be “mere examples of acrobatics and deserve nothing more than a wry grin, since they could never help to engender truly valid works of art”. After reading Lionnais’ defense of this opinion, speaking about the purpose a literary format serves to the literature itself, I am able to appreciate these structures, such as the lipogram, with more merit. Something interesting that Lionnais points out in his second manifesto is the author’s strict obedience of one, abstract structure while simultaneously breaking the more traditional, structure. With this idea of the importance of structure in understanding a piece, a reader is able to appreciate works like Perec’s A Void and other works exemplifying these literary acrobatics on a deeper level.