The poems, fantasy works and fairy tales he authored, although largely ignored locally upon being published, have since drawn acclaim for their accomplished style, and are considered by many unique in Romanian literature.

He was also a friend of the German writer Michael Ende and the Greek poet Odysseas Elytis, with whom he kept in touch in spite of the difficulties posed by their living on different sides of the Iron Curtain.

Soon after, he was moved to what was considered a lower position, that of copy-editor for Centrocoop commercials, an office whose equivalent in capitalist countries was that of copywriter (Chimet was thus one of Romania's first persons to have this job description after World War II).

He was selected to be part of the jury for the University of Oklahoma's Neustadt International Prize for Literature (the only Romanian to enjoy this appointment), but the communist authorities' hostility prevented him from honoring the request.

The two shared a rejection for normative control over literature: while Chimet centered his criticism on the cultural guidelines imposed by Ceaușescu (see April Theses), Ende depicted in negative terms the impact of Neorealism and the Marxist aesthetics popularized by Bertold Brecht.

[3] He also befriended the celebrated poet Odysseas Elytis, as well as prominent critics of the Communist regime (historian Katherine Verdery and exiled writer Norman Manea) and artists from South and Central American countries.

[1] During his final years, despite usually refusing to comment on his incidental career in marketing, Chimet agreed to give lectures on selling technique for a private university—it was one of the first courses of its kind in Romania.

[1] Paul Cernat proposed that Chimet was in may ways similar to members of the Oniric trend—who also mixed subversive messages with imagery inspired by Surrealism—and especially to its representatives Leonid Dimov and Emil Brumaru.

[3] Like his friend Gheorghe Ursu, Iordan Chimet cultivated the avant-garde,[2][3] and was interested in the writings of his predecessors Urmuz, Gherasim Luca and Tristan Tzara, as well as in those of his Surrealist contemporary Gellu Naum.

[2] In 1999, he edited one of the first compilations of the Romanian avant-garde, with its title borrowed from Urmuz: Cică niște cronicari, duceau lipsă de șalvari ("It Seems It Did Happen Once, Some Chroniclers Lacked Baggy Pants").

[14] He attempted to replicate the experience of interwar authors, who, as he himself argued, practiced "art as an exercise in admiration, as a statement of love, as a manifestation of the artist's solidarity with beings forgotten by history.

[3] According to his friend, essayist Monica Gheț, Chimet's style was the equivalent of "a mirror held in front of the local art's subconscious in times of need", while his stance was "pure and combative".

By vesting the most modest of realities with the prestige and the charm of fairy tales and poetry, Chimet invites (and compels) us to admit them as situated at an energetic and incantational level by no means inferior to the most delicate fantasies and the least bound reveries of Surrealism.

"[16] He adds: "The world reveals itself [to Chimet] in its entirety, in its rich coloring, in the unending complexity of its textures, in the steady and calm rhythm of various activities and contemplations synchronized with the individual's psychosomatic foundations.

"[18] As a political essayist, in addition to his critique of totalitarian systems both left- and right-wing, Chimet was noted for his rejection of all forms of racism, and for being an outspoken critic of antisemitism.

"[9] Chimet himself argued: "All I could do was to defend, in the books I managed to publish, as well as in the everyday life that emerges and disappears, the ideas of friendship, loyalty and human solidarity which the world of my childhood was presenting to us as the foundations of existence."

[7] Also according to Cernat, aside from Surrealism, some of the ExiL poems recalled Imagism, while others were close to Lucian Blaga's Expressionism and the original style developed by Constant Tonegaru, or borrowed themes from the Biblical Ecclesiastes and the traditional stories of the Eastern world.

A series of "laments", the pieces develop themes which Iordan Chimet would reuse in later works, such as the images of his native Galaţi as "the Old City" and an exiled monarch who would become "Baltazar the Little Fish".

"[1] In Paul Cernat's view, they form part of the fantasy genre to be read by adults, similar to the writings of Edward Lear, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, J. R. R. Tolkien, Peter Beagle, and Lewis Carroll.

He likened the wordplays and intricate calligraphy associated with the characters and plot to the Lettrist experiments, and the themes they alluded to with those present in some later works by Romanian poet Marin Sorescu.

Thus, he proposed that an episode marking the mythological age of Chimet's sea realm, where a character named Arghir asks a whale to swallow him, reminded one of Sorescu's poem Iona (with both of them being reinterpretations of the Old Testament story of Jonah).

Cernat called it: "a refined musical poem, apparently naïve, unveiling unexpected depths to the reader, through the means of shared asides" and "an open game of fantasy filled with love for all that exists, where reality fades into the genuine fantastic of an eternal childhood's unreality, hardly shadowed by melancholy.

"[3] The story centers on a cosmopolitan city (based on Chimet's vision of Galați),[2][3] which is disputed between the orange-colored dwarfs who live in the "labyrinth forest" and the shapeshifting ogre Gagafu, who is assisted by an evil cat named Sultan.

Melancholy, sad musings, and reflections about the fragility of existence are present throughout the book; at one point toward the end of the story, Chimet's narrator confesses: "And then I withdrew, tiptoeing, to my canopy in the garden and I asked myself, sitting alone, what the sense of all these events was.

[11] Commenting on the anthology's subversive content, Marina Debattista noted: "The reader is discreetly engaged into practicing a form of Surrealism, which temporarily frees him from the clutches of reality.

The latter effect is significant for the context in which 'The Anthology of Innocence' saw print: in 1970s Romania, the wooden language, like some acid, insidious sea, eroded spirits and clamped down on their natural opening for the miraculous.

Paul Cernat noted that, when the Democratic Convention governments allowed private publishing houses to issue school textbooks of Romanian literature, Iordan Chimet's were made more available to schoolchildren.

The volume was illustrated with drawings made for this purpose by some of Chimet's friends: the writers Ionesco, Claude Aveline, Richard Bach, Emilio Breda, Odysseas Elytis, and the Mexican visual artists Juan Soriano and José Garcia Ocejo.

[3] In 2006–2007, Chimet also published two volumes of the letters he exchanged with various other authors, including Ursu and Camil Baciu, under the title Cartea prietenilor mei ("My Friends' Book").