Book of Noodles: Stories of Simpletons or Fools and Their Follies

Noodleheads and Nincompoops! Knuckleheads and Numskulls! Mooncalfs and Ninnyhammers! Just don't call them stupids or dummies. A celebrated jest-book with which the name W.A. Clouston is famously associated, "noodle stories" are usually simple and brief - a few are little more than witty proverbs - often told to younger children, noodles stories appeal to all ages and nimbly across many cultural barriers. Almost always humorous and entertaining, there is some kind of twisted logic to Clouston's stories. Who is really the fool? What of silliness that resides in all of us? These crafty tales enable us to laugh at our imperfect selves - and that is why the noodle stories live on, fresh and revealing as ever. "My design has been to bring together, from widely scattered sources, many of which are probably unknown or inaccessible to ordinary readers, the best of this class of humorous narratives, in the oldest existing.forms. My aim has been not only to compile an amusing story-book, but to illustrate to some extent the migrations of popular fictions from country to country." - W.A. Clouston