Manifestos and A Void

The First and Second Manifestos by Francois Le Lionnais helps me to better understand Oulipian writing formats and Perec’s A Void. Last Wednesday we talked about how a constraining form of writing, the Oulipian formats, actually allow the author greater possibilities in writing. I think Lionnais is agreeing. He says that constraining your writing will actually open up new writing structures that are even less constraining that traditional ones. I think that as confusing as Perec can sometimes be, his constraints are making us readers experience a literature beyond our wildest imaginations. Perec’s writing provokes thoughts and inferences that a “traditional” form of writing cannot do. By the end of A Void it will be interesting to see not only how the story ends, but how this format of writing changes our perceptions of literature and structural writing.