Series

Illustrated fairy tales for adults

We all know the tale of the ape sitting for all eternity at the typewriter hoping to compose, through sheer chance, a comedy by Shakespeare.

This fable is used to give the idea of the improbability of things, like the emergence of intelligence in primates. But there's a slight hitch : to accept that story assumes one imagines the ape as a pure immortal mechanism coupled to another machine made out of keys and an ink ribbon. That amounts to denying him any intelligence, any artistic sensitivity, or even the slightest embryonic common sense.

What would happen if, instead of an imaginary chimpanzee, one invited a real chimpanzee, equipped with a real cortex and a no less authentic conscience, to sit at the typewriter ? That's the experiment undertaken by Samuel McIntosh, gardener, mathematician, Doctor in Probability and Animal Behaviour.

Will Percival, formerly the typist ape, end by writing Shakespeare's Works ? Will he type away blindly, or will he pervert chance by letting his genius express itself ? Will he obey his destiny as metaphorical animal or will he take a malicious pleasure in deceiving the predictions of the ethologists ? Will Samuel McIntosh successfully complete his experiment ?

Reading these pages should help you answer those questions.

However, nothing is less certain : several versions of the same fable exist, and they don't always agree.