What are you currently reading?
Posted: Tue Jun 02, 2026 7:21 am
Since we already have threads for film and painting, I thought I should create one for prose and poetry, since it seems like we have some readers here 
I am currently reading La Boucle by the oulipian* Jacques Roubaud. This is one of those literary projects that I like reading but find difficult to describe.
I will make an attempt: The book belongs to the larger cycle Le Grand Incendie de Londres. These 'autobiographical' prose works were written in place of a poetic 'Project' that Roubaud failed to write after the deaths of his wife and brother. What remains is written on top of the ruins of this Project.
One of the self-imposed formal constraints is simple: Roubaud writes his 'prose-moments' each morning and evening, in the gathering or fading light, recording his memories without revision. Another is the system of bifurcations. The narrative line advances chronologically, but at certain points it divides. A memory-image opens a new path by association. These paths may lead far from the original sequence, connect distant moments, return to earlier passages, or cast familiar scenes in a different light. The text is very generous in a sense, it gives the reader a lot of freedom to approach it in different ways, almost like a choose your own adventure book.
The most appealing aspect to me is the encounter between this rigorously conceived structure and the disorder imposed by the author's grief. Despite all the ornamentation of the prose, the playfulness of the narrative etc, what keeps me coming back to the book despite its difficulty is the encounter with a 'face' in the text. The face of a person that is struggling to move past the fact of death and the incessant return of their memories. The writing circles these limits without overcoming them, but the search becomes the work.
* Oulipo is a french-speaking writer's collective that use self-imposed formal “constraints” when writing, the most renowned example probably being Perec’s novel La Disparition, written without the use of the letter 'e'. Sometimes Oulipian constraints are geometric, algebraic or numerological, for example the plot of another of Perec’s books, La Vie mode d’emploi is engendered by means of calculations based on a “10×10 magic square.
I am currently reading La Boucle by the oulipian* Jacques Roubaud. This is one of those literary projects that I like reading but find difficult to describe.
I will make an attempt: The book belongs to the larger cycle Le Grand Incendie de Londres. These 'autobiographical' prose works were written in place of a poetic 'Project' that Roubaud failed to write after the deaths of his wife and brother. What remains is written on top of the ruins of this Project.
One of the self-imposed formal constraints is simple: Roubaud writes his 'prose-moments' each morning and evening, in the gathering or fading light, recording his memories without revision. Another is the system of bifurcations. The narrative line advances chronologically, but at certain points it divides. A memory-image opens a new path by association. These paths may lead far from the original sequence, connect distant moments, return to earlier passages, or cast familiar scenes in a different light. The text is very generous in a sense, it gives the reader a lot of freedom to approach it in different ways, almost like a choose your own adventure book.
The most appealing aspect to me is the encounter between this rigorously conceived structure and the disorder imposed by the author's grief. Despite all the ornamentation of the prose, the playfulness of the narrative etc, what keeps me coming back to the book despite its difficulty is the encounter with a 'face' in the text. The face of a person that is struggling to move past the fact of death and the incessant return of their memories. The writing circles these limits without overcoming them, but the search becomes the work.
* Oulipo is a french-speaking writer's collective that use self-imposed formal “constraints” when writing, the most renowned example probably being Perec’s novel La Disparition, written without the use of the letter 'e'. Sometimes Oulipian constraints are geometric, algebraic or numerological, for example the plot of another of Perec’s books, La Vie mode d’emploi is engendered by means of calculations based on a “10×10 magic square.
