Abstract from Wikipedia : Pierre Henri Cami (1884–1958) was a French humorist. "Though blissfully ignored for most of his life by theEnglish-speaking public, Cami (Pierre Henri) remainedfor four full decades one of France’s most prolific,and acclaimed, comic authors. Hailed by his idol andadmirer Charlie Chaplin as “the greatest humorist in theworld,” Cami was somewhat willfully omitted by AndréBreton from his Anthologie de l’Humour Noir—no doubton account of his huge popular success—but admiredby other Surrealists. Between 1910, when he foundedLe Petit Corbillard Illustrè, the “humorous organ of thecorporation of undertakers,” and his death in 1958,Cami published well over forty volumes of minidramasand comic novels—notably The Memoirs of God-the-Father, The Adventures of Loufock-Holmes, The Son ofthe Three Musketeers, and the travels of his perhaps mostfamous creation, Monsieur Rikiki and the Rikiki family—as well as countless songs, strip cartoons, screenplaysand even operettas. Many of these he also illustrated.But Cami was best known for his “dramatic fantasies,”written mostly for La Vie Drôle, the humorous columnpublished weekly by Le Journal, where he had stepped,somewhat belatedly, into the shoes of that column’simmortal co-founder, Alphonse Allais. Self-styledmicrodramas of everyday life, of legend, of history(and even of geography), of true (and false) romance,and more often than not of volupté, these screwballcan sneze a whole universe out sideways to the Marx Brothers and forward to, inEngland, the Goons and, in France, to the Theatreof the Absurd." —John Crombie (Introduction to A Cami Sampler) See A CAMI SAMPLER. Translated from the French by John Crombie.Publisher: Black Scat Books. A collection of Cami's comic microdramas, plus a selection of his drawings.[REF: publication date: Jan., 2013; www.blackscatbooks.com] Read Doug Skinner's translation of Cami's The Man in the Iron Mask.
