...would any kind soul in possession of the 1944, 1945, or 1957 edition of "L'anglais sans peine" by Alphonse Chérel consider posting images of a couple of pages containing dialogues between the Smiths and the Martins? The more inane, the better. (Any readable images will do, whether scans or mobile phone snapshots.) Searches on Google Images are not producing any pages with those specific characters. Is there some other place I could be looking?
Normally I would order a copy of the book and scan the pages myself, but I'm currently in a location where delivery from the online vendors that carry used titles like that is not available.
Eugène Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano" (La cantatrice chauve) was inspired by the highly contrived and unnatural dialogues the author encountered while learning English from Chérel's book. (The play's main characters are named Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Mr. & Mrs. Martin.) I would love to be able to show my students a couple of examples of the real thing when I teach an upcoming unit on Humor and Theater of the Absurd, if only to demonstrate that the ridiculous non sequiturs in the play are close cousins to those in model conversations in many language-teaching books, especially from that era.
I'm not aware of any other site online where I could post a request this obscure.
Thanks for your indulgence.
