Is Collins' Pocket Interpreters: France (1937 edition) the most pessimistic phrasebook ever published? What was meant as a practical tool for British tourists instead became an accidental masterpiece of travel anxiety literature, suggesting that a trip to France was less about seeing the Eiffel Tower and more about navigating a gauntlet of pickpockets, stalkers, and blood loss.
The book's phrases progress like scenes from a psychological thriller. It starts innocently enough with minor inconveniences before spiraling into increasingly dire situations, spiraling into a chronicle of mounting despair:
I cannot open my case.
I have lost my keys.
I did not know that I had to pay.
I cannot find my porter.
Excuse me, sir, that seat is mine.
I cannot find my ticket!
I have left my gloves (my purse) in the dining car.
I feel sick.
The noise is terrible.
Did you not get my letter?
I cannot sleep at night, there is so much noise.
There are no towels here.
The sheets on this bed are damp.
I have seen a mouse in the room.
These shoes are not mine.
The radiator doesn't work.
This is not clean, bring me another.
I can't eat this. Take it away!
The water is too hot, you are scalding me!
It doesn't work.
This doesn't smell very nice.
There is a mistake in the bill.
I am lost.
Someone robbed me.
I shall call a policeman.
That man is following me everywhere.
There has been an accident!
She has been run over.
He is losing blood.
He has lost consciousness.
American humorist James Thurber, who discovered the book in a London shop, recognized its inadvertent literary merit. He described it as "a dramatic tragedy of an overwhelming and original kind" with "dark, cumulative power."
[Via Futility Closet]
Previously:
• Susie Bright reads Thurber's version of a 'The Night Before Christmas,' in the Hemingway Manner
• The 13 Clocks: Grimm's Fairytales meet The Phantom Tollbooth
