Imaginary interview with Cami
by Charactorium · Cami · Literature · Performing Arts · 6 min read
We pushed open the door of a Parisian apartment cluttered with manuscripts, somewhere between two comic newspaper offices, in the early 1930s. The man who greets us has a mischievous eye and an inkwell always open. Pierre Henri Cami agrees to talk about his kingdom: that of nonsense.
—What does a working day look like for you?
In the morning, I sit at my table with my pen and inkwell, and I blacken paper as others breathe. The editorial offices are waiting, so I go on: a story, a sketch, a little drama, and hop, the next. In the afternoon, I revise my texts and, above all, I draw them, because a sketch is often worth more than a paragraph to bring out the absurd. They call me prolific; I would rather say I have contracted an incurable disease of the imagination. I have to feed all those illustrated humor newspapers sold at newsstands, and believe me, the press has an ogre's appetite. I deliver, I deliver, and I start again. My only rest is to invent a new nonsense bigger than the last.
They call me prolific; I would rather say I have contracted an incurable disease of the imagination.
—Writing and drawing at the same time — isn't that juggling two trades?
Two trades? For me it's just one, cut in two like a music-hall sausage. When I write a story, I already see it as a sketch; and when I draw, my little fellows immediately start telling silly things. The typewriter spins the words, the pencil catches the grimaces, and one cannot go without the other. I grew up with the idea that visual laughter and written laughter are twin brothers. Look at the great illustrated magazines of my time, those that make all of France laugh on the subway: the text dances with the image. I refuse to choose. A man who could only write OR only draw seems as incomplete to me as a clown who has been confiscated half his red nose.
Visual laughter and written laughter are twin brothers.
—How was your detective Loufock-Holmès born?
I was, like everyone, fascinated by that tall beanpole from Baker Street who deduces the color of your socks from the mud on your soles. And I said to myself: what if I pushed this logic to pure madness? Thus was born Loufock-Holmès, in 1926. My detective solves his mysteries through perfectly delirious reasoning — and yet irrefutable, because in my universe, the absurd has its own laws, stricter even than those of Toulouse or Scotland Yard. Where Conan Doyle makes science triumph, I make nonsense triumph, and I assure you it is never wrong. That is the whole mechanism of parody: taking seriously what is not, and dismantling seriousness by taking it at its word. Loufock deduces, therefore he raves; he raves, therefore he is right.
In my universe, the absurd has its own laws, stricter even than those of Scotland Yard.
—What, essentially, is a Loufock-Holmès deduction?
A good loony deduction starts from a tiny clue and soars to a monstrous conclusion, without ever stumbling along the way. It is a tightrope walker crossing the void on a thread of reason, except the thread is rubber and leads straight into a wall. The secret, you see, is rigor: the more neatly the reasoning is built, the funnier the final folly. If I bungle it, everything collapses and you see the trick. So I work on my cases like a watchmaker works on a watch that, once wound, strikes noon at four o'clock. Loufock-Holmès taught me that logic is the most comical of instruments, provided you plug it into a void. Science takes itself seriously; I stick out my tongue at it with my hands in my pockets.
Logic is the most comical of instruments, provided you plug it into a void.
—You invented an unprecedented theatrical genre, the ultra-short play. How would you explain it?
Imagine a whole tragedy — passion, betrayal, blood, despair — played out in a few seconds, reduced to two or three lines and a curtain that falls almost as soon as it rises. That is my ultra-short plays. I had had enough of those big plays that make you cry for three hours over a story that could fit on a tram ticket. So I stripped it to the bone. The spectator doesn't even have time to pull out a handkerchief before the catastrophe is already over, and laughter springs from this haste. It is parody of grand serious theater: I take its pompous effects and make them explode in fast-forward. A music-hall sketch still lasts too long compared to my plays. Brevity, for me, is not laziness: it is a weapon.
Brevity, for me, is not laziness: it is a weapon.
—Why this obsession with always making it shorter?
Because laughter, like lightning, must strike at once. If you announce it too long, it surprises no one. In grand drama, you prepare, you hesitate, you prolong the hero's agony; I eliminate the preparation and keep the flash. A well-made ultra-short play is a slap: it smacks, it stings, and it's over before the cheek reddens. I also like the idea of upsetting the theater clock, that solemn place where people speak so gravely. Reducing a tragedy to a few lines is toppling all the pomp of the great Parisian stages with a simple trip. And besides, I confess, I am in a hurry: I have so many other silly things to write that I have no leisure to dwell on just one.
Laughter, like lightning, must strike at once.
—Where do you draw that whimsical atmosphere that fuels your stories?
In the evening, when the pen rests, I go down into the Paris that lights up. The cabarets, the music halls, the cafés where wit flows as fast as absinthe — that is my real theater. I pass a music-hall poster with garish colors announcing a spectacular revue, and already my imagination runs wild. We are in these Roaring Twenties where people dance to forget the mud of the trenches, where everything seems allowed, where the smallest revue promises girls, laughter, and lights. That fever, that slightly mad gaiety of the post-war, goes straight into my stories. Often I merely transcribe, barely distorted, the joyful excess I see around me. The city invents the absurd on its own; I pick it up and put it into pages.
The city invents the absurd on its own; I pick it up and put it into pages.
—What does this Paris of celebration and spectacle mean to you?
It is a huge workshop for making fantasy. Since the Belle Époque, this city has never stopped laughing, and the music hall is its beating heart. I find my characters ready-made there: the pompous bourgeois, the revue star, the cabaret artist who stakes his life on a couplet. After the armistice, the theaters lit up again with a frenzy I will never forget — as if Paris wanted to make up for four years of silence in a single night of partying. I breathe that energy on the terraces, between a coffee and a conversation that goes off the rails. Nonsense is never far from a good Parisian evening: you just have to listen to slightly tipsy people turning the world upside down. At bottom, I am just a diligent secretary of that gentle madness.
At bottom, I am just a diligent secretary of that gentle madness.
—It is said that Charlie Chaplin held you in very high esteem. What does that recognition inspire in you?
It is reported that Charlie Chaplin, after reading my texts, hailed me as "the greatest humorist in the world." Imagine the effect of such a phrase on a man who scribbles stories about mad detectives between newspaper deliveries! What touches me is not the compliment — I distrust grand words — but the idea that we spoke the same language. He with his little tramp, I with my pen, we both seek to make people laugh through incongruity, without ever needing cruelty. His art is silent, mine is talkative, and yet they meet in the same shrug at the absurdity of the world. That a man of the screen should thus reach out to a man of the newsstand, that delights me more than any medal.
We both seek to make people laugh through incongruity, without ever needing cruelty.
—What brings your humor close to that of silent cinema?
Silence, precisely. The great tramp of the screen does not need words to wring your heart or double you over with laughter: a hat that slips, a cane that trips, and everything is said. My ultra-short plays seek the same economy: to say much with almost nothing, to make a whole tragedy spring from a tiny gesture. And then we share this refusal of cruelty. You can make people laugh without humiliating anyone — the laughter of nonsense does not target a man, it targets the overly serious order of things. When my Loufock-Holmès deduces anything with magnificent aplomb, he is not mocking anyone: he celebrates pure fantasy. That, I believe, is what makes me and the little duck-walk man cousins: we make the world lighter without making it harsher.
The laughter of nonsense does not target a man, it targets the overly serious order of things.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Cami's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.