As a kid studying high school French, I read with delight Mark Twain’s depiction of an American’s attempt to converse with a Frenchman. Twain wickedly renders the Frenchman’s remarks in literal English, alongside his own fractured French, to comic effect. Their exchange has something to do with bananas — bananes. Of course it does!

Investing the mundane with eventfulness: the Twain approach to humor, the Eliot approach to poetry, the Hopper approach to painting, the Gilles Labruyère approach to cartooning. Gilles’s fluent bilingual captions nourish my French. I succumb here to the impulse to subject one of them to a Twaining. With pleas for indulgence to the artist, here goes my impertinence:

A genial gent sitting on a train hears the announcement:

Vous avez pris place à bord du train à destination de Toulouse.
You have taken place aboard of the train to destination of Toulouse.

The gentleman says to his companion sitting opposite:

Ça tombe bien. C’est là que j’vais.
That falls well. It is there that I go.

For all that the literal English is cracked, it hits the mark, plus ou moins. 

Next is Gary Larson. Let me set it up for you: A microbiologist working late nights is being mugged at slide point by a microbe. Staring into the eyepiece, what can he do but surrender his wallet and hope not to get hurt? Here’s the cartoon. [BULLETIN: Quel dommage! When I tested the link for the Larson cartoon it gets this message now: Egad! That cartoon is no longer available. Try one of these instead.]

Lastly I’ve but two words: Liana Fincke. The New Yorker has introduced me to this indescribable cartoonist, for which I’m grateful. To understand why I have no words, see her Wife of Valor. It kills.

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