Raymond Queneau (Primary Title)
Man Ray, American, 1890 - 1976 (Artist)
The French poet and novelist Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) joined the Surrealist group in January 1925 and regularly published dream narratives, automatic writing, and poetry in Surrealist magazines. Man Ray’s photograph of a twenty-two-year-old Queneau dates to the same year and shows a smiling and bespectacled writer whose confident demeanor belies his young age. In 1928 Queneau married Janine Kahn, the sister-in-law of Surrealist leader André Breton, which ultimately led to his abrupt break with the Surrealists after Breton and Simone Kahn divorced in 1929. Over the next four decades, Queneau continued to write, and in 1959 he achieved international acclaim for his novel Zazie dans le metro, which sold 600,000 copies in its first year.
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