Tales and Proposals represents the fulfillment of an express intention of Raymond Queneau, who intended to bring together under this title a certain number of prose writings. These texts, the oldest of which, completely unpublished, dates from 1922, are all marked by a touch of cold absurdity which inclines us to place them on the side of what André Breton called “black humor”. But their baroque diversity testifies to a spirit encyclopaedically open to singularity. Puns, ironic speculations, false dreams, logical delusions, subversive use of rhetoric, everything contributes to our entertainment and, more seriously, to the task of demystifying literature. Thus is born a fantastic naturalness which means that we are not surprised when the author presents us with a dog who engages in conversation with a customer in a very ordinary room of a provincial café or even a horse, moreover a Trojan, drinking a drink at the counter of a high luxury bar.

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