The master absurdist is back in LOVES, DELIGHTS, & ORGANS (Amours, délices et orgues). This madcap collection of stories, fables, hoaxes and jokes is pataphysical fun for the literate layabout. This first English translation features 47 sublime textual specimens — PLUS six additional stories, a rousing introduction, and enlightening notes on the translation by Allaisian scholar Doug Skinner. If you’ve yet to discover the bizarre world of Alphonse Allais, you’re in for a treat.
“Allais comes across as a very modern writer, and his work as an experimental enterprise which is exemplary in many ways… it is also quite possible to invoke such writers as Raymond Queneau, Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges.” —Jean-Marie Defays
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alphonse Allais was born in the Northern port town of Honfleur, in Calvados, on October 20, 1854. He was, therefore, born in the same town as Erik Satie, and on the same day as Arthur Rimbaud. His father was a pharmacist, and sent young Alphonse to Paris to learn the family trade. Young Alphonse mostly cut his classes, and steeped himself in the absinthe-soaked delights of bohemian Montmartre.
He joined the hard-drinking literary coterie the Hydropathes, accompanied the celebrated prankster Sapeck (Eugène Bataille) on his misadventures, submitted monochromatic pictures to the proto-Dada exhibitions of the Incohérents, and wrote squibs for various ephemeral papers. He became adept, in both word and deed, at the unique Parisian discipline of fumisme: a heady mix of hoaxing, provocation, and iconoclasm, all delivered with deadpan aplomb. Although he’d abandoned chemistry, his scientific credentials gave him a perspective (and persona) that set him apart from the more febrile poets around him. He was often likened to an English schoolmaster, with a placid demeanor that made his wild ideas all the more startling. [from the introduction by Doug Skinner]
Poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, was considered one of the greatest English satirists — a nimble wit and scribbler of sublime wordplay, parodies & pornographic puns.
Descended from a long line of scribbles, Henry has arrived from the UK in time to accept the role of “Everyman” — a stick figure for our times. Although not fully formed (some might even say “crudely drawn”), he, like the rest of us, scrawls through life in wonder and confusion. He is sagebrush blown down a lonesome highway, a cloned cartoon at the mercy of fickle Fate. Henry doesn’t have answers, he dropped out of Doodle U. and the side effects of Nietzschian philosophy and post-Hegelian dualism have taken their toll. How else to explain that Czechoslovakian pimple on the end of his nose. We try not to laugh at his flubs and flaws, his Hollywood dreams and Kafkaesque nightmares, but it’s impossible. And that’s a good reason to grab this book.
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