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 Genie." This delightful compilation is proto-Dada at its most delicious

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"...

The master absurdist's inaugural collection contains his hand-picked favorites from the pages of "Le Chat Noir" the bohemian journal that amused and scandalized Paris. Here you'll find Allais in the first flush of his comic genius, spinning out elegant and hilarious gems of black humor on suicide, murder, obsession, and adultery. You will meet the philosophical cuckold, the young lady in love with a pig, the inventor of the Tumultoscope, and Ferdinand, the most resourceful duck in literature. Among the highlights is Allais's most famous story, "A Thoroughly Parisian Drama," a favorite of...