Not to bleed too much into tomorrow (which will be totally different anyway), I do very much recommend Warren F. Motte Jr.'s Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature. I’ve been reading it on and off since January and it’s been wonderful and lovely. It’s exciting stuff to a nerd like me, both in terms of the possibilities for literature as such, but also the computational stuff I like to play with from time to time.

One of those, "A Story as You Like it" by Raymond Queneau, particularly interested me, as it’s a step-wise story not unlike Perec’s The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise (though actually procedural, whereas Perec’s is more absurd). You should get the book, but this particular excerpt can be found on the web. In any case, I thought it would be a fun to remake it as a web page, and so I did (it’s been a slow week).

Here is a link, and here is an embedded version (note, it gets ugly real fast if you click the "Return to Projects" link, so please don’t — I’m far too lazy to figure out how not to show that when the page is embedded):

I sent what amounts to fan mail to Dr. Motte, fawning just a little and asking if I could use his translation for the site. He said it probably falls under "fair use" (which it seems to from all I can tell), and encouraged the idea besides. He also (very tactfully and kindly) pointed out that I’ve been spelling "Queneau" wrong for…​ a long time. Silly me: I’m so poor at details (don’t tell my boss — though I do try much harder to be detail-minded at work than when at play).

Anyway, play with it, let me know where/how it breaks, and hopefully enjoy it, too.