In 2012, Norman Conquest kicked off the Absurdist Texts and Documents series at Black Scat Books with his illustrated adaptation of Alphonse Allais’s story Un drame bien parisien. The original limited edition is now out of print. He has just republished a new expanded edition, with an introduction and notes by Doug Skinner. You can find it at Black Scat Books. Alphonse rides again!
4 responses so far ↓
1 Doug // May 14, 2015 at 1:39 am
Yes, the story (originally Un drame bien parisien) takes place at the Incoherents Ball. I don’t know why you’re having trouble posting. Maybe you used a word that triggered the spam filter.
2 Win // May 14, 2015 at 7:19 pm
I think you’re right and I’ve altered what I suspect is the offending word. So with apologies for mussing up this comments thread, I’ll take the liberty of posting the whole thing now. You may want to trim out of some these extraneous posts.
3 Win // May 14, 2015 at 7:22 pm
It’s a disgrace to leave a comments section unmolested, so here are some thoughts worth barely a penny:
Is it right to assume that Masks refers to the masked balls mounted by the Incoherents in the early 1880s?
And Doug, have you by any chance ever seen the 1958 movie Ni Vu, Ni Connu, based on Allais’ novel L’Affair Blaireau?
The title Ni Vu, Ni Connu puts me in mind of Samuel Beckett’s lovely Mal vu mal dit.
Which reminded me that one of the suggested allusions of Beckett’s En Attendant Godot is Emile Goudeau, who founded the Hydropathes…and the Hydropathes met at Le Chat Noir…and the Incoherents sprang from the same milieu and shared members with the Hydropathes…
Have you ever had the good fortune to hear Joseph Gung’l’s Die Hydropathen Waltz? (Never mind, I see it’s available on UToob…) I wonder why the fascination with fear of water, and is it about rabies, and was rabies in the air in the 1870s?
And what did mad dogs have to do with black cats…Hydropathes at Le Chat Noir…?
The fear of water also reminds me of W.C. Field’s sublime Honest John scene from Six of a Kind. Fields is unable to bring the glass of water to his lips…
And finally, I’m trying to decide how I would like it, as a dead deaf man, if someone were to play Gung’l’s Die Hydropathen Waltz during a performance of Alphonse Allais’ Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man…I’m not sure I could tell the difference…
Off to “listen” to Funeral March for the Obsequies of a Deaf Man” on U Toob now…
(I have not received any monies for these mentions of U Toob.)
Oh! That reminds me of one other stray thought I had in this regard…Allais, it means YouWent. I rather wish he’d been called Alphonse Vas instead. YouGo. Rhymes with Yugo. There’s a holorhyme in there somewhere…
Tata!
4 Doug // May 15, 2015 at 9:08 am
Why yes, the story takes place at the Incoherents ball. Allais was part of the Hydropathes, Incoherents, and Chat Noir. I assume the Hydropathes, being classic Bohemians, chose the name because they were averse to either drinking water or bathing in it.
I’ve seen snippets of the various film versions of l’Affaire Blaireau. I think there are three: a 1932 version, Ni vu ni connu, and a TV film. That seems appropriate; it started out as a play.
I hadn’t heard that Goudeau was a possible inspiration for Godot. Nice to know… And I haven’t heard the Gung’l. I’ll have to listen.
I do remember Fields’s water drinking scene. And let’s not forget that much of The Bank Dick takes place in The Black Pussycat Cafe.
Allais’s name inspired numerous puns, often scatological. Those naughty Parisians!
(Hmm, your last comment also went into the spam folder, but I retrieved it. It’s a mystery…)