![]() ![]() In yet another previous myth, Daedalus had built a life-size cow suit for a cursed queen who had fallen in love with a bull, enabling both rampant bestiality and the conception of the aforementioned minotaur, but that’s yet another myth for a much darker day.Īnyway, once he’s contracted Daedalus to build this labyrinth to imprison the bad apple on his family tree, Minos then suffers from a fit of kingly paranoia and shoves Daedalus into a tower, along with his son, Icarus, so that Daedalus won’t tell anyone the layout of the labyrinth and release Minos’ hideous stepson. Now, in a previous myth, Daedalus had been contracted on a self-employed freelance basis by King Minos of Crete to build a massive labyrinth in which to house the king’s stepson, a hideous man-bull-beast named the minotaur (and that’s a myth for another day). Name anything, and Daedalus probably invented it (and Thomas Edison probably took the credit). The most important thing that you have to keep in mind about this dude is that he’s the world’s best inventor and architect. OK, so this story starts with a dude named Daedalus. Relevant historical / literary info under the Read More, as always! I 400% can, sweet anon! Anyone who doesn’t want to read a badly told story about Ancient Greece’s very own Houdini should probably press J on their keyboard now as this is pretty long. ![]() I think out of the three Raymond Queneau books I read recently, this is my favourite.Anonymous asked: "can you do the myth of icarus?" It is a pioneering book and it was lots of fun to read. At the beginning of the book, the translator Barbara Wright talks about the challenges of translating Queneau into English, and the challenges of translating in general, and it is very fascinating to read. She is cool, no-nonsense, speaks her mind, and does what her heart wants. In one scene, there are two characters having a conversation, and the first one is called Jean and the second one is called Jacques – we almost expect a third character called Rousseau there □ I loved all the characters in the story, they all play their roles perfectly, but my favourite was one called LN – she is the person Icarus meets when he ends up in the real world. Queneau even sneaks in philosophical passages in a conversation in humorous ways. The vintage Queneau humour and puns are on glorious display throughout the book. The fact that the book is written in play form works in its favour, because the story moves through dialogue, it is engaging and the pages fly by fast. The other writers probably borrowed this idea from Queneau’s book. It is a classic Oulipo experimental work which we would expect from Queneau. For readers unfamiliar with this plot device, this book is innovative and mind-blowing. This kind of story – a character jumping out from a book into the real world – has been done to the death in the 21st century by authors including Cornelia Funke, Jasper Fforde and even Jodi Picoult (with her daughter Samantha Van Leer), but when Queneau wrote this book, he was probably the first to do it in modern times. Well, whether it is called a novel or a play – which is all just semantics anyway – it tells a fascinating story. I thought that something which is written in the form of a play is a play. I have heard of novels-in-verse, but this is the first time I am hearing of a novel in play form. ‘ The Flight of Icarus‘ is regarded as the only Queneau novel written in the form of a play. How all this craziness ends and the situation is resolved forms the rest of the story. Before long, more and more crazy stuff happens, Icarus starts living his life in the real world, the detective is looking for him, two other characters leave the pages of the book to come in search of him, and another character leaves another book, because he doesn’t want to do what the author wants him to. Meanwhile, Icarus has jumped from the novel manuscript into the real world, ends up in a bar, learns to drink absinthe, meets a beautiful woman, and goes home with her. ![]() His author friends suggest that he hire a detective who can find Icarus and get him back. He is not able to proceed further with his novel in the absence of the main character. In Raymond Queneau’s ‘ The Flight of Icarus‘, the novelist Hubert Lubert discovers one day that the main character in the novel he is working on, Icarus, has disappeared from the pages of the book. ![]()
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