Le Dictionnaire amoureux de l’inutile

🇺🇸 After co-writing a playful and witty book together, François Morel, the father, and Valentin, the son, come together on stage for a two-voice reading of the finest pages from a dictionary unlike any other. François is known for his Friday morning radio segments on France Inter and for his stage work, blending the charm of the 1950s with contemporary humor. Valentin previously worked as an assistant film director and was famously Jean-Pierre Bacri’s devoted chauffeur. Today, he serves as assistant director for the play Art, directed by François.

Their book is a journey through emotions both frivolous and enduring: skipping stones across a river, folding paper fortune tellers, the expression “combing the giraffe,” memories of toy electric trains and old telegrams. It is an impossible book, perhaps, because the notion of uselessness itself is open to question. Is man more useful than the lobster? Is the potato more indispensable than bindweed? Is the village idiot less necessary than the member of the Institute?

The book wanders freely, celebrating the pleasures of sleeping in late and the joy of spoonerisms hidden in politicians’ speeches, inviting readers to rediscover the poetry and absurdity of everyday life.