Cambridge Scholars Publishing Raymond Queneau’s Dubliners: Bewildered by Excess of Love

This work is a broad-ranging exploration of two comic erotic and well-nigh feminist novels written by Raymond Queneau, On est toujours trop bon avec les femmes (1947) and Journal intime (1950). Both are set in Ireland, were initially published by Éditions du Scorpion under the pseudonym Sally Mara, and then later published together by Gallimard as Les Œuvres completes de Sally Mara (1962). The book examines Queneau’s life when he wrote these texts, the pervasive Joycean influences, his surreal version of the 1916 Dublin Uprising versus the real event, his remarkably accurate Dublin city and his use of the Irish language. The seven core chapters are explorations of prominent aspects of these works, and most involve the solution of puzzles by means of investigations of contexts, contemporary events, and a wide variety of sources. In conclusion, the book makes a convincing case for the literary and entertainment value of Les Œuvres completes de Sally Mara as a long-planned and subtly integrated work. Review “This book proposes an engagingly digressive interpretation of Queneau’s relationship with and representation of Ireland, its literature and history. […] One of its many highlights is its survey of possible mathematical patterns in the Sally Mara cycle: the reader comes away with the twin impressions that perhaps Queneau’s figures never quite add up and that perhaps that is precisely the point. In Queneau’s world, as Gosling shows us, the process of calculation may matter more than any result.”Douglas SmithUniversity College Dublin; Irish Journal of French Studies About the Author James Patrick Gosling is a retired research scientist, teacher and administrator. Spending most of his career at the National University of Ireland Galway, his expertise concerned immunoassay technology (see the still-in-print Immunoassay: A Practical Approach; 2000), and involved partnerships with colleagues in Liège and Tours. Since retirement, his research interests have shifted to French authors and the French vernacular. Elements of the present work have been presented at annual meetings of the Association des Études Françaises et Francophones d’Irlande.