"Unusual pedagogue, the author of this manual (which delighted Raymond Queneau) addresses the sedentary, the "fatigue companions", who long to live great adventures without giving up a comfortable life: carefully chosen journeys, mythical cities and cabarets, rare and essential readings; these are the ingredients that allow to build the set of an adventure novel and start writing as whoever is made to the sea, experiencing, of course, the risk in the head of others.

"Mac Orlan has a great pirate thing, although he is rather the writer who has ceased to be a pirate, but still plays the evening accordion as the supreme angelus of piracy."
Ramón Gómez de la Serna"