Have you ordered your copy of How I Became an Idiot?  As you no doubt read in the last post, Doug Skinner has translated four examples of Alphonse Allais’s sustained mockery of the conservative critic Francisque Sarcey, and they are now available in a nice little volume from Black Scat Books. Allais, seen above lunching [...]

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Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899) was, for much of his career, the most powerful theatrical critic in Paris. He was the perfect model of the blunt bourgeois, championing common sense, anti-intellectualism, and traditional values. He favored light, commercial fare, and railed against Ibsen and Jarry. He was, predictably, a prime target for young artists. Alphonse Allais took [...]

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We return to the great French journalist, humorist and nonpareil, Alphonse Allais.  I remind you that my translations of his Captain Cap stories, Captain Cap Volumes 1 and 2, are available from Black Scat Books; and that further installments are scheduled for July and August.  A collection of his immortal mockery of the reactionary critic [...]

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Today is Shakespeare’s birthday, maybe; the exact date is uncertain.  But it’s a good uncertain date to appreciate that Stratfordian ullage, Shakespeare’s apocrypha. Although the canonical plays have long inspired artists, the apocrypha have been largely unillustrated.  Many of them are perfectly fine plays, but suffer that curious stigma of being once ascribed but now [...]

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Our final gallery of caricatures begins with one by André Rouveyre. Jean Veber, who drew a number of portraits of Allais, chose to portray him as a horse in this sketch.  At least, I think that’s a horse. The playwright Sacha Guitry, who had the unfortunate experience of trying to write a play with Allais, [...]

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Georges Lorin made this sketch of Allais sometime in the ’90s. Jean Veber added to his gallery of Allais caricatures, with a portrait of Allais in the costume he proposed for the members of the Académie Française. Jean Villemot drew this curious portrait for the cover of Le Sourire. An anonymous silhouette, from a country [...]

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Today is April 1, a day sanctified by the extraordinary French humorist Alphonse Allais; and I am happy to announce that it brings the release of Captain Cap, Volume 2. Allais’s stories of his absurd anti-hero, first published in 1902, have been meticulously translated and illustrated by Doug Skinner, in the second volume of a [...]

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Jean Veber drew several caricatures of Allais in Le Journal, January 6, 1896; here are two of them. Ernest La Jeunesse (who, parenthetically, had a long affair with Allais’s wife, and may have fathered her child) drew this sketch of the unhappy husband.   Pierre le Trividie drew this portrait of the young Allais in [...]

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As I continue to translate and illustrate Alphonse Allais, I’ve been contemplating the many caricatures of him.  Having already offered portraits of his semi-fictional antihero, Captain Cap, I’ll now post some of the man himself.  Internet Allais buffs, you’re welcome. The first is by Cabriol, aka Georges Lorin, from the Hydropathe, January 28, 1880.  Allais’s [...]

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When I suggested to Norman Conquest, the CEO of Black Scat Books, that I translate the Captain Cap stories of Alphonse Allais, he was all for it.  However, he also proposed that I draw the cover, which left me with a problem:  what did Captain Cap look like? The French pocket book that my friend [...]

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