A short biography written predominately in present tense
While the name Aléc may not be familiar to the average international reader, it is a
name that will be forever imprinted in French memories everywhere, even in the memories
of future French people disguised as British, such as Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the
USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D. The magnificent poetry Aléc left as his heritage has
touched many hearts and opened many eyes since it was first published in 1878, and the
following article is a short chronicle of, as well as tribute to, his life
(written predominately in present tense.)
Aléc was born in Paris, France in January, 1850. During the first fifteen years of
his life
he would have seemed to most to be a remarkably normal French boy, having remarkably
normal French interests such as
urinating in public places and masturbating to pictures in medical journals. No one
would have guessed during these adolescent years that Aléc would later grow up to be one
of France's most notorious misanthropes and most excellent poets of all time.
It is on the exact day of Aléc's fifteenth birthday celebration the defining change
occurs. As he celebrates the anniversary by debuting sexually with a 70 year old
prostitute, his parents, a stupidly rich couple working as thrillseekers for
the French army, are busy adventuring
in the Algerian jungle. At approximately 7 o'clock, metric time, they fall victim to
a tragedy that will forever warp the path of the young boy's life. This event is best
described by
one of his own early diary entries:
"As they scavenged the deep forest for pagan artifacts, they were suddenly surprised
by a band of negro women who threateningly bathed in a small lake near
my parent's camp. Seeing
as how the negroes had not yet been properly civilized, my father made the brave and
difficult
decision of shooting them several times in the heart with his elephant rifle, making
sure that they were many times too dead to employ any sorts of black magic tricks
and suddenly make the trees come to life or the sky explode or something.
Unfortunately, the women's cowardly screams attracted the attention of the
rest of their heretic tribe, and despite my parents' attempts at justifying their
positions by both reference to Jesus Christ and warning shots to the heads of people they
assumed might be tribal leaders, the savages soon began to murder them in cold blood."
|
(After this, Aléc goes on for ten pages about how his new legal guardian, Uncle Christophe,
is not his actual uncle by blood, should therefore not have the power to decide how
many dishes of strange French cuisine Aléc should be allowed to have for dessert, and is probably
gay.)
It is the death of his parents that marks the start of Aléc's life as an artistic
person. Up until this
point he is, as described by one of his teachers, "a refined young man
with a healthy interest in sports, the consumption of red wine, and various important
sciences, such as phrenology and racial hygienics." After his parents' passing,
Aléc becomes introverted and estranged, no longer attending school, and devoting most
of his time to his new hobby of taunting hookers by murdering them with surgical
instruments. On his eighteenth birthday, he has his Uncle Christophe imprisoned for
lacking any sense of charm, sells his father's house, and moves into an abandoned
pigsty in the outskirts of Paris.
It is in this pigsty that Aléc does his most important work. His first accomplishment
is the invention of the now-familiar French trademark facial expression
pretentious-raise-of-one-eyebrow-while-simultaneously-sighing-and-applauding-in-a-sarcastic-manner.
The invention is celebrated in the French artistic community, and though it pays
nothing, Aléc has inherited more than enough money from
his parents, and never has to worry about making ends meet. This grants him
the possibility to devote himself completely to his art. In his early twenties,
he makes many failed attempts at breaking
into the world of modernistic poetry with works such as
"Love poems written backwards", "Did you notice the fact that all my poems were
written backwards in my previous submission? These are also written backwards", and
"Why the fuck won't you publish my goddamn collection of poetry written backwards when
this has obviously never been done before? This is the last time I'll bother sending
you any of my backwards-written poems you evil cretins", as well as many others.
Although his name is at this time already known in certain circles of the Parisian cultural elite,
due to the invention of aforementioned facial expression, Aléc's true breakthrough
doesn't come until 1878. He has recently recieved his fifty-seventh refusal letter
from the renowned French publisher L'art culinaire for his work
"?won tuoba woH", and in an angry fit he burns the manuscript and violently
scribbles down a few caricature drawings of the people he dislikes the most, just in order to have
something visual to bite his thumb at as he tries to calm his temper. These doodles are to
become the character gallery of a large series of picture poems, the first volume of
which will be released later the same year. He gives this series the title
"Une âme ordinaire". Aléc continues to work exclusively on his picture poems
until he contracts an uncurable case of
getting a splinter in the sole of his foot and dies in 1891. As is requested
in his will, he is buried on top of the kitchen table in the house of an unexpecting
family of four.
Une âme ordinaire is by a majority of Aléc's fans considered his most
brilliant work (alternatively: his least completely asinine by a majority
of his critics), but for political reasons it has never before been translated
to any language, ever. We are therefore truly proud to finally be able to present the world with
this first non-French printing (we use the term loosely) of the prophetic masterpiece, right here in the
very cradle of modern art: The Information Front-to-Front Collision. In order
for you to see exactly how brilliant this body of poetry is, our trusted
German-English-French-but-mostly-German translator, Fritz van Drache Faustkampf,
has applied to it an internationally recognized technique of literary criticism proven
to illustrate the exact degree of excellence in any work of art. Behold the wonder
that is the suspense curve (note that the coordinate system has arrows on its
axises mainly because Fritz was flogged into a stain of blood by his math teacher
whenever he forgot to add them and not because the system is actually of an
infinite size.)
unevenly dotted line displays level of excellence of une âme ordinaire
As you can see from this scientific diagram, "Une âme ordinaire" is
extremely excellent, but not so excellent that you'll suddenly find yourself in an
awkward position. This is known to scholars as perfection.
Poems will be
added on a semi-regular basis, whenever Fritz gets them ready for publication,
so please stop by semi-regularly and check for updates.
Enjoy (or you'll be on our list.)
|