Frosted glass aquariums for shy fish
Or, the lost-and-profound innovations of Alphonse Allais
If Alphonse Allais were alive today, he'd be chief innovation evangelist at a major tech company. But he’s dead today, and has been since 1905. And if that weren’t bad enough, the French writer is all but unknown in the English-speaking world.
“Drop his name at any gathering of well-read people and it will sink to the bottom of an immediate silence,” wrote Miles Kington, the British translator of his collected writings.
This despite the fact that Allais invented abstract art, germ warfare, and instant coffee, as well as a frosted-glass aquarium for shy fish. And on the subject of immediate silence, he composed the above note-free funeral march for a great deaf man, which can be heard here.
Arthur C. Clarke famously observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Alphonse Allais provides the more obscure corollary that any sufficiently advanced prediction is indistinguishable from a joke.
He developed the theory that the English had “taken so much coal and ore and mineral wealth from the bowels of the earth that their country has become light enough to float,” and the only things preventing perfidious Albion from floating away were the telegraph lines that secured it in place.
He followed vegetarianism to its illogical conclusion: If you don’t want to kill a cow for a steak, you certainly shouldn’t put the kettle on for tea, given all the microscopic aqueous creatures who will die for your chamomile. And so:
“Whenever you absolutely have to boil some water, just put a good helping of cocaine in it. Because cocaine removes all sense of feeling from microbes.”
He also imagined the smellhouse, an odour-based navigational aide that would allow ships to plot their bearings based on specific local aromas. But he foresaw the particularly French problem that
“the most powerful smell you can arrange is a good local cheese, which would give you different flavours in different parts of France. But lighthouses are often battered by terrible storms and cut off from vital supplies of food. What would you say when you found that an awful disaster at sea had been caused by a starving lighthouse keeper who had been obliged to eat his lighthouse?’”
And on the subject of the ocean, he painted this work, titled “Astonishment of young naval recruits seeing, for the first time, your blue, O Mediterranean Sea!”:
Perhaps rivaled only by “First communion of anemic young girls in snowy weather”:
And, to complete the French tricolour, “Apoplectic cardinals harvesting tomatoes on the shore of the Red Sea”:
Allais’ writing is basically untranslatable, according to his translator, because he “was a stylist who did tricks with French that cannot be done with English, any more than a genuine French loaf can be cooked from English flour.” Beyond that, he introduced big ideas en route to small jokes, as in a series of columns suggesting inventions such as:
A device for informing all motor car tourists of their exact position, difficulties ahead, local hazards and interesting attractions nearby.
Method of teaching animals to play music.
A revolving café-restaurant.
A summer fez.
Apparatus to enable readers to find any passage in any book at great speed.
Accessory to be fitted to one’s belt for holding an umbrella over one’s head.
Completely new method, guaranteed sure and infallible, of manufacturing or preparing mayonnaise sauce.
From today’s vantage point, with our inexhaustible supplies of mayo, these look obvious. And Alphonse Allais’ greatest invention may have been his clever way to be forgotten: Just speed through the profound on the way to a punchline.
Consider his short story about a wild party where the host loudly denied the existence of God at the stroke of midnight, immediately after which the supreme deity lightened the doorstep.
“I hope that doesn’t mean you can’t come in and have a little drink with us?” the host asked, and God obliged until the sun came up.
“When the time came for God to take leave of His hosts, He could be heard quite happily agreeing with everyone that He did not exist.”
Quick quips; lightning
“A man with a new idea is a crank until that idea succeeds.”
— Mark Twain
“The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.”
— Sid Caesar
“The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don’t; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.”
— John Updike
Speaking of…
Jokey innovations
Innovative jokes
Also: Which of the following would you most like to see in an upcoming issue of Get Wit Quick?
Get Wit Quick No. 159 wears the same fez all year round. Upon Miles Kington’s death in 2008, his family had a park bench inscribed with the words “In fond memory of Miles Kington, who hated this spot, because there was never anywhere to sit down and enjoy it from.” Ideas are a dime a dozen, which explains the $18 list price of Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. The ❤️ below exists whether you tap it or not.