BW3: Author Oulipo Mashup

And now for something completely different.  Have you ever heard of an Oulipo?  I was introduced to the form during one of my writing classes and found it quite intriguing.   Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle or OULIPO was founded by French Mathematician Francois de Lionnais and writer Raymond Queneau in 1960.   Basically it is introducing a constraint while writing a poem, creating a short story, or a lipogram.  

My first experiment with creating an OULIPO using Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken took an interesting turn.   I tried the N + 7 route which is using the dictionary,  replace the major nouns with another noun which is the 7th one below it.  However the first line ending up being Two robbers diverged in a women.  Hmmm! Once I quit laughing, I got the bright idea to take book titles and transform them into a story, but got as far as a weird poem.  

This week we have several literary author birthdays making it really hard to choose just one. So my Oulipo is a mashup of titles from their books, which once again makes either a a strange story or weird poem. I'll leave that up to you to decide.  Also, without googling, see if you can identify the authors from the titles. Then add one or more of them to your want list to read this year.

A descent into the Maelstrom

Behind the Lines

Cry of the Owl

Deep Water

Facts of the case of M. Valdemar

Gold Bug

Hop Frog

Imp of the Perverse

Lady with the Little Dog

Mr. Pim

Nothing that Meets the Eye

Portraits and Speculation

Red House Mystery

Six Weeks in Russia

Talented Mr. Ripley

The Way We Live Now

Three Sisters

We Didn’t Mean to See

When We Were Very Young

Two People

A Letter to America

A Table Near the Band

Lovers in London

Purloined Letter

Agnes Grey

Benefactor

Cask of Amontillado

Secret Water

Once Upon a Time

Peter Duck 

Carol 

Four Day’s Wonder

Things in our Garden

Black Cat

Seagulls

Masque of Red Death 

House at Pooh Corner

Pit and the Pendulum

Where the Stress Falls

Premature Burial 

Why don't you give it a try with books from your own shelves and see what happens!  

Happy reading! 

******************************************************************

Please link to your specific  post and not your general blog link. In the Your Name field, type in your name and the name of the book in parenthesis. In the Your URL field leave a link to your specific post. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment telling us what you have been reading.   Every week I will put up Mr. Linky which will close at the end of each book week.  No matter what book you are reading or reviewing at the time, whether it be # 1 or # 5 or so on, link to the current week's post.