Between 1886 to 1893, the writer and humorist Alphonse Allais published a notorious series of newspaper columns under Sarcey's name with titles such as "How I Became an Idiot."
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For example, in 1896, he reviewed the premiere of Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi—a precursor of the Theatre of the Absurd—and called it "a filthy fraud which deserves nothing but the silence of contempt."