Blessed are you, dear reader, if you do not yet know the most famous Monty Python sketches. When you have finished reading this column (but still before the end, it would please me), grab your coat and your scarf, and head for the nearest bookstore. There, asks the comely bookseller (booksellers are always gracious, I know: I was one) to get you as soon as the reference of these adorable lunatics UK: Texts, thoughts and dialogues of the deaf . Exchange it with a smile of complicity (if a library worthy of the name, it will make you necessarily a smile of complicity with you holding the book. Otherwise, changes bookstore. And booksellers). Go home and immerse yourself in the humor completely, perfectly, exquisitely, indescribably absurd.
You will not be quite the same, once you have eaten these little skits of two or three pages each, I will affirm, dear reader, there is life before and life after the reading of Monty Python. But beware, I must point out to you … the side effects of this book are sometimes disastrous: You try to tell one of their sketches at all around you, and you must go about it every time on three occasions, you’ll be interrupted by a laugh at every sentence. This will allow you to perform at your expense, as the Monty Python sketch is impossible to tell. You may discover, like me, one of their sketches by reading on the subway, Tinnitus Miracle and you must change the car to the next station, for your untimely bursting with laughter annoy the austere World player sitting in front of you. You rethink the street or in front of your screen to one of their sketches, and bystanders (or your colleagues) will wonder why you smile with concern to the angels.
In short, reading the Monty Python is dangerous, dear reader, but, you know, this is a subversive blog (and I advise you to come back here tomorrow to see how …). And now that this column is coming to an end (and a kiss to those who read to the end), dark … What you? And if you read them in English, it seems that it’s even better.
Enjoy, dear reader!
Caroline Béraud-Sudreau
PS: I could tell you that this book is of Ionesco, Beckett or Jarry but much funnier, I could tell you that there is something Oulipian in dialogues full of absurd and nonsense of British crazy, I could tell you about universalism of nonsense, and perhaps initiate a discussion with you about the value of discovering these sketches in writing rather than watch them on TV … but of others have done before me, and so much better. I preferred you to share my knee-jerk reactions and I hope it incites you to discover them.
PS2: If someone has a synonym for “sketches”, a word that appears roughly fifteen times in my column, it is manifested on the field or be silent forever. Thank you.