Archy and Mehitabel

archy and mehitabel were a cockroach and a cat archy had the soul of a vers libre poet and laboriously composed by jumping on the keys of don marquis s typewriter at night while mehitabel supposedly had the soul of Cleopatra

his output was published in the new york evening sun starting in 1916 and later in the tribune at first as Filler when marquis couldn t produce his column

in it archy told marquis of his and mehitabel s adventures toujours gai toujours gai the poems were a satire of urban life in the 1920s

it is probably most famous for the unusual typography because archy couldn t operate the shift key consequently the poems themselves are underrated and dismissed as gimmicky

books

 * Archy and Mehitabel, 1927
 * Archys Life of Mehitabel, 1933
 * Archy Does his Part, 1935
 * The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, 1940
 * Archyology, 1996 (posthumous)
 * Achyology II, 1998
 * The Annotated Archy and Mehitabel, 2006

plays
Mel Brooks co-wrote a musical, Shinbone Alley, based on the poems in 1957

western animation
An animated film of the Brooks play was made in 1971.

tropes
"there s a dance in the old dame yet
 * Aerith and Bob pretty self explanatory
 * All Lowercase Letters THOUGH A COUPLE OF THE COLUMNS WERE IN ALL CAPS
 * Carnivore Confusion mehitabel ate cockroaches and from time to time tried to eat archy
 * Gratuitous French

toujours gai toujours gai"

"boss i am disappointed in
 * Green Aesop what the ants are saying
 * Hand Wave see mst3k mantra below
 * Heroic Sacrifice freddy the rat
 * Literary Agent Hypothesis the poems were supposedly typed by archy at night and marquis would find them the next morning
 * MST3K Mantra

some of your readers they

are always asking how does

archy work the shift so as to get a

new line or how does archy do

this or do that they

are always interested in technical

details when the main question is

whether the stuff is

literature or not"


 * No Punctuation Period for the same reason as the lack of capitals
 * Painting the Medium
 * Reincarnation both archy and mehitabel had human souls he a vers libre poet and she cleopatra and many others freddy the rat was a poet before and then there was the suicide club of bugs whose previous human selves had taken their own lives
 * talking animals well a typing animal at least