Is This What Twitter Is?

May 9, 2009 at 1:31 pm (By Amba)

From A Word A Day’s weekly e-mail roundup:

From: Dominique Mellinger
Subject: Re: Oulipo

About Oulipo: it’s short for “Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle”. “Un ouvroir” is a place where women met to do needlework in the old times but it suggests also more generally a place where people work together, sharing projects and techniques. Ouvroir is a deliciously old-fashioned word which, associated with “littérature”, suggests that people can meet and produce literary work as women did embroidery or lace in the past: chatting happily and having fun, I suppose. The word “Potentielle” refers to something possible in the future or about to happen.

In France, “Des papous dans la tête” is a cult radio programme on France Culture radio channel every Sunday at noon (lasts about two hours) where people belonging to Oulipo or working in its spirit practise lipogram and all sorts of varied (and often hilarious) literary games, sometimes very refined and very poetical. Texts are usually intentionally far-fetched or a bit abstruse and exchanges between participants so much fun, always. “Des papous dans la tête” is really a cult programme for people who love French literature and word games.

1 Comment

  1. Randy said,

    May 9, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    IMO, no. Twitter is not particularly interactive. It is a series of shout-outs with extraordinarily short lives. There’s very little actual conversation going on, almost none of it in real-time.

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