This is an amazing anthology of writings by members of the group known a Oulipo (Ouvroir de litterature potentiale), comprised of Italo Calvino, Harry Mathews, Georges Petec, Jacques Roubaud, Raymond Queneau, and others. Rather than inspiration, rather than experience, rather than self-expression, the Oulipians view imaginative writing as an exercise dominated by the method of "constrains". A major contribution to literary theory and an indispensable guide to an approach to writing that has yet to make its impact on the United States.

Warren F. Motte, Jr. is chair of the Department of French and Italian at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he specializes in contemporary writing and focuses particularly on experimental works that challenge conventional notions of literary form. He has written several studies of contemporary French Literature, including Fables of the Novel: French Fiction Since 1990, available from Dalkey Archive Press. Translator and editor of Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature, he also edited an issue of the journal SubStance dedicated to the work of Jacques Jouet, and is a contributing editor to Context magazine.