Bookforum interviews Hervé Le Tellier
Since joining the French literary society of the Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature) in 1992, Hervé Le Tellier, a former mathematician, food critic, and scientific journalist, has taken up the task of investigating what the influential novelist Georges Perec once termed the l'infra-ordinaire—or the extremely mundane. Le Tellier has produced a copious catalog of work—novels, poems, and what some Oulipians cryptically refer to as “exercises.”
Since joining the French literary society of the Oulipo (Workshop of Potential Literature) in 1992, Hervé Le Tellier, a former mathematician, food critic, and scientific journalist, has taken up the task of investigating what the influential novelist Georges Perec once termed the l'infra-ordinaire (the extremely mundane). A relative late-comer to the group (founded by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais in 1960), Le Tellier has, nonetheless, produced a copious catalog of work—novels, poems, and what some Oulipians cryptically refer to as “exercises”—all the while maintaining an avuncular