{"id":289266,"date":"2012-02-16T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2012\/02\/16\/a-book-i-cant-wait-to-read-many-subtle-channels-by-daniel-levin-becker\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:11:44","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:11:44","slug":"a-book-i-cant-wait-to-read-many-subtle-channels-by-daniel-levin-becker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2012\/02\/16\/a-book-i-cant-wait-to-read-many-subtle-channels-by-daniel-levin-becker\/","title":{"rendered":"A Book I Can&#39;t Wait to Read: &#34;Many Subtle Channels&#34; by Daniel Levin Becker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t read a lot of critical\/academic books, but I can&#8217;t wait to get my hands on Daniel Levin Becker&#8217;s <em>Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature<\/em>, which is coming out from Harvard University Press next month:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>What sort of society could bind together Jacques Roubaud, Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp, and Raymond Queneau\u2014and Daniel Levin Becker, a young American obsessed with language play? Only the Oulipo, the Paris-based experimental collective founded in 1960 and fated to become one of literature\u2019s quirkiest movements.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>An international organization of writers, artists, and scientists who embrace formal and procedural constraints to achieve literature\u2019s possibilities, the Oulipo (the French acronym stands for \u201cworkshop for potential literature\u201d) is perhaps best known as the cradle of Georges Perec\u2019s novel <em>A Void<\/em>, which does not contain the letter e. Drawn to the Oulipo\u2019s mystique, Levin Becker secured a Fulbright grant to study the organization and traveled to Paris. He was eventually offered membership, becoming only the second American to be admitted to the group. From the perspective of a young initiate, the Oulipians and their projects are at once bizarre and utterly compelling. Levin Becker\u2019s love for games, puzzles, and language play is infectious, calling to mind Elif Batuman\u2019s delight in Russian literature in <em>The Possessed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dalkeyarchive.com\/book\/?GCOI=15647100350570\">Jacques Roubaud&#8217;s <em>Mathematics<\/em><\/a> coming out from Dalkey Archive coming out this spring as well, it&#8217;s as good a time as any to go on an Oulipian bender. . . . <\/p>\n<div class=\"ad_banner\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/catalog.openletterbooks.org\/authors\/9-rodoreda#death\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/images\/256.jpg\"  \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t read a lot of critical\/academic books, but I can&#8217;t wait to get my hands on Daniel Levin Becker&#8217;s Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, which is coming out from Harvard University Press next month: What sort of society could bind together Jacques Roubaud, Italo Calvino, Marcel Duchamp, and Raymond Queneau\u2014and Daniel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[45536,45546,45566,45556,21506],"class_list":["post-289266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-books-to-look-forward-to","tag-daniel-levin-becker","tag-harvard-university-press","tag-many-subtle-channels","tag-oulipo"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341746,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289266\/revisions\/341746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}