Sally Mara's Intimate Diary
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The often sensual and dark humour of Sally Mara’s Journal intime is founded on language and languages, so this translation, while prioritizing clarity, aims to maintain ‘Frenchness’, tinged of course with Dublinese. Surprisingly, for a French author, Irish words and phrases occur throughout; these are not translated but, like some challenging French phrases, are supported by footnotes. In 1949, when Raymond Queneau wrote Journal intime, published anonymously under the pseudonym Sally Mara, he was, as always, greatly influenced by James Joyce and fascinated by the limitations of language. He was also in need of the ready money provided by Éditions du Scorpion, publishers of erotic and violent pulp fiction, and of Journal intime.
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Raymond Queneau (1903–1976) is a key figure of mid twentieth century French literature. He was a novelist, poet/songwriter, screenwriter, encyclopaedist, mathematician and painter. He was also a literary innovator and theoretician, and cofounded L’Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (OuLiPo) a fertile association of writers interested in constrained writing techniques. A senior editor with the prestigious publishers Gallimard, he also mentored aspiring writers (e.g. Marguerite Duras, Patrick Modiano, Nobel 2104) and was a judge for the annual Prix Goncourt. He is especially well known for the novel Zazie dans le Metro (1959) filmed by Louis Malle.
James Gosling, translator of and commentator on this work has previously published appreciations of Queneau’s Sally Mara works (Raymond Queneau’s Dubliners, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019; Queneau philologue, Sally romancière, Éditions universitaires de Dijon, in press).
