Oulipo's first forays into combinatorics ---------------------------------------------
The Workshop of Potential Literature (Oulipo), a French group devoted to creative, innovative literature, was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau (1903–1976) and François Le Lionnais (1901–1984). It has often used tree structures and combinatorics to devise texts with multiple possible paths. Georges Perec (1936–1982) was undoubtedly a pioneer with L’Augmentation, published in 1968 in Enseignement programmé (Dunod–Hachette) under the title L’art et la manière d’aborder son chef de service pour lui demander une augmentation. Perec explores every possibility through a formal flowchart, exhaustive as ever.
It was adapted into a play for six characters, L’Augmentation, which premiered on February 26, 1970, at the Théâtre de la Gaîté-Montparnasse in a production by director Marcel Cuvelier (1924–2015).
In Un conte à votre façon (Gallimard, 1973), Raymond Queneau breaks new ground by inviting readers to make choices that allow them to shape "the story of the three sprightly little peas" as they please.