Allais, Alphonse: À se tordre (French). 21 Dec 2012
 

Alphonse Allais (1854-1905) was a French writer and humorist. His writings are filled with word plays and absurd and minimalistic humour. He also created early samples (with humoristic intent) of silent musical pieces and monochromatic pictures. In writing, he's famous for his "holorhymes", verses which not only rhyme at the end, but are homophonous all along.

"À se tordre" (1891) is a collection of short stories, which typically end with a gag or word play. I guess many of them are idiomatic, and some probably make reference to some events or social trends of the time. I confess I didn't get many of the jokes (but probably native French speakers will have it easier), but it's a nice reading anyway.

As usual, this is proofread and re-formatted to the best of my knowledge.

All feedback is welcome.

Gracias Jellby,

I do it in french, ok?

Ton livrel (livre électronique) est excellent: il est simple et efficace sans manquer d'élégance.

En ce qui concerne l'humour de Allais, il me semble que c'est très XIXe siècle et très parisien.

En passant, ses écrits scientifiques ont-ils un quelconque intérêt?

¡Tenga un día bueno!

Merci bien, c'est ça ce que je cherche ;)

I couldn't say, I don't know them... Are they accessible anywhere?

Buenas tardes jellby,

Here a quote from Wikipedia (translated in english from french) : "His scientific works are less known (research on color photography and a patent for freeze-dried coffee, and very thorough work on the synthesis of rubber)."

I was curious about that because you are a scientific and I like things about coffee and photography! I have had a look to Gallica.fr and I found nothing. Anyway, it's not very important and his scientific works have probably not been "révolutionnaires". :D