Just received an interesting notice on Christian Tebordo's forthcoming novel (from Afterbirth -- late 2006), Better Ways of Being Dead, and can't help posting this intriguing outline, from the publicity materials:
"The narrator's investigation leads him to a factory city in upstate New York, populated by a cult of people doomed to immortality unless they die violently at the hands of a stranger, which leads to a series of slapstick scenarios in which the cultists attempt to be killed by him without tainting him with their own condition. When they finally enlist the woman he loves, an agoraphobe who lives in a network of tunnels beneath the University of Cincinnati, and who may or may not love him back, he is forced to choose between granting their desire to die and affirming the inherent value of life."
Who says no one has heard of/cares about/knows what to do with the Oulipo in the States.
Well, perhaps we're speaking about the Oulipopo.
At any rate, something to be on the lookout for.
"The narrator's investigation leads him to a factory city in upstate New York, populated by a cult of people doomed to immortality unless they die violently at the hands of a stranger, which leads to a series of slapstick scenarios in which the cultists attempt to be killed by him without tainting him with their own condition. When they finally enlist the woman he loves, an agoraphobe who lives in a network of tunnels beneath the University of Cincinnati, and who may or may not love him back, he is forced to choose between granting their desire to die and affirming the inherent value of life."
Who says no one has heard of/cares about/knows what to do with the Oulipo in the States.
Well, perhaps we're speaking about the Oulipopo.
At any rate, something to be on the lookout for.
posted by Laird Hunt at 8:35 PM
2 Comments:
This poor student needs help. What's the constraint in the Tebordo publicity outline that gives rise to the Oulipo reference?
Well, first there is a bit more to the publicity material than the excerpt I've included -- so I had/have more to go on. Second though is the not so veiled transmogrification of the Oulipian by-law regarding how one can leave the Oulipo, once one has become a member: not easy to do. Just as in, Tebordo's world, it is not easy to get out of the immortality gig. The Oulipian by-law can be found in The Oulipo Compendium, among other places...
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