Pablo Picasso idolized him so deeply that he carried the writer's revolver as a tribute after his death. Alfred Jarry, born in Laval in 1873 into an unstable household, began mocking his overweight physics teacher Monsieur Hebert as a schoolboy, creating a grotesque puppet named Pere Heb that would evolve into one of the most disruptive characters in theater history.

After his parents died of influenza, Jarry threw himself into the Parisian bohemian scene, drinking absinthe he called his green goddess. His play Ubu Roi triggered a fifteen-minute riot on its 1896 opening night with a single invented curse word. He then began living permanently as the character Ubu, formulated the philosophy of pataphysics, the science of imaginary solutions, and died in poverty in 1907 at thirty-four, requesting a toothpick.

• The schoolboy prank an ...