First published in French in 1947, Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style has appeared in over thirty languages — including Italian, thanks to Umberto Eco; Serbian, thanks to Danilo Kiš; and Esperanto, thanks to one István Ertl — and inspired a wide variety of tributes, from cartoon adaptation to theatrical performance to at least one set of erotic retellings. It’s easy to see why: Exercises in Style is an irresistibly simple and frequently hilarious demonstration of the potential of language, in which Queneau relates the same anecdote about a disagreement on a city bus in 99 different rhetorical registers — conversational, poetic, technical, comic, mathematical, genre-literary. The incident in question is nothing to write home about, which was surely Queneau’s point: the repetition and mundaneness of the non-story allows him to show just how much room for choice and mannerism — for style, high or low — is inherent in everything we commit to writing.

For the book’s 65th anniversary, New Directions is reissuing Barbara Wright’s 1958 English translation along with 25 previously untranslated exercises and a handful of new ones by contemporary Queneau acolytes (for aren’t we all acolytes?) including Harry Mathews, Amelia Gray, Jonathan Lethem, and Enrique Vila-Matas. The new edition hits shelves on January 31st. Below you will find a preview of the latter two categories: “Epistolary,” one of the styles left out of Queneau’s original 99, and “Instructions,” a brand new contribution from Jesse Ball.

INSTRUCTIONS
by Jesse Ball

Wake up early. Stretch your neck with a neck stretching device. Do so until it is long and supple. Tear a button off your overcoat—one of the lower ones. Make sure to bring your hat. It ought to be tall and tied with a felt cord. Under no circumstances show up with a ribbon around your hat.

Leave your house. Go to the corner. Get on the S bus. It doesn’t matter much why. Get on, and make sure it’s full. If it isn’t full, wait until another S bus comes—one that’s full. Get on that one.

Raise up all the indignation you can muster. Hold it steady. Hold it. When someone jostles you, even if no one jostles you, when someone seems to jostle you, make a stink. Don’t let that sort of thing pass, not even for a minute. And if it happens again…

When a seat opens, and I’ll say, ride that bus until a seat opens, you get in it. Get in the seat and sit down. I don’t care if a dying pregnant woman needs to sit down. You sit down. Such a woman—she’ll die anyway, along with everyone on the bus, and everyone you’re ever going to meet,...