A Wolf in Frog's Clothing: The Best of Alphonse Allais

Humor & Entertainment

Kingston, Miles

Allais, Alphonse

Humor

Pan/Macmillan

Captain Cap: His Adventures, His Ideas, His Drinks

Literature & Fiction

World Literature

BLACK SCAT BOOKS

This collection of his rare theatrical texts includes original translations—never before published in English—of ten monologues, three one-act plays, and twelve shorter dialogues, skits and burlesques drawn from Allais’s columns in such publications as LE CHAT NOIR and L'HYDROPATHE. In addition to Doug Skinner’s fascinating notes on the texts, you’ll find an appendix of scarce photographs from the Paris production of "Le Pauvre Bougre et Le Bon Génie." This delightful compilation is proto-Dada at its most delicious!

Selected Plays of Alphonse Allais

Arts & Photography

Performing Arts

Alphonse Allais (1854-1905) was France's greatest humorist. His elegance, scientific curiosity, preoccupation with language and logic, wordplay and flashes of cruelty inspired Alfred Jarry, as well as succeeding generations of Surrealists, Pataphysicians, and Oulipians. THE SQUADRON'S UMBRELLA collects 39 of Allais's funniest stories -- many originally published in the legendary paper LE CHAT NOIR, written for the Bohemians of Montmartre. Included are such classic pranks on the reader as "The Templars" (in which the plot becomes secondary to remembering the hero's name) and "Like the Others" (in which a lover's attempts to emulate his rivals lead to fatal but inevitable results.) These tales have amused and inspired generations, and now English readers can enjoy the master absurdist at his best. As the author promises, this book contains no umbrella and the subject of squadrons is "not even broached."

The Squadron's Umbrella

Literary

Alphonse Allais's third collection finds him in full anti-bilious form: love stories, revenge stories, monologues, short-shorts, and animal stories-all affronting the reader with startlingly modern absurdity, black humor, and wordplay. Among the highlights are "Absinthes," an internal monologue about the Green Fairy; "Poor Césarine," a tale of obsessive love; and "A Good Society," which proposes collecting used matches for the poor. As a bonus, six uncollected stories are included. PLUS illustrations and informative notes on the text by Doug Skinner. FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION

No Bile!

Humor & Satire

Captain Cap was the fictitious mouthpiece that Alphonse Allais used to tell the tallest of his tall stories and develop his most exotic story ideas, including the majority of those that would nowadays be considered science-fictional. Allais liked to keep up with contemporary developments in science, and was ever ready to adapt ideas therefrom -- especially ideas that seemed to pose a challenge to common sense -- into the humorous newspaper articles with which he made his living and his reputation. By virtue of this habit of picking up such trifles, and adding absurd twists to them, Allais became an influential figure in the development of the French roman scientifique. This volume contains the unabridged 1902 collection Allais eventually produced of Captain Cap's adventures, plus a selection of further exotic items from his earliest endeavors, which commandeer supernatural motifs in the same spirit that he was later to bring to the plunder of scientific fancies.

The Adventures of Captain Cap

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction

Hollywood Comics

Drawn from Black Scat’s eight editions of the master French absurdist, this compendium is a sublime introduction to the wordplay and black humor that shocked and dazzled Bohemian Paris in the raucous “Banquet Years.” The READER includes the celebrated pataphysical text “A Thoroughly Parisian Drama”—a favorite of both André Breton and the Oulipians—as well as stories, plays, an excerpt from his only novel, and the classic exploits of Captain Cap and Francisque Sarcey. The translator, Doug Skinner, has added copious notes and an illuminating introduction. Step into the funhouse! Laughs and surprises await!

The Alphonse Allais Reader

2 + 2 = 5

À se tordre

Contemporary

Flammarion

Cher Monsieur vous-même !: Correspondance 1875-1905

Essays & Correspondence

FAYARD

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Books by Allais, Alphonse