FFB: THE STUFFED OWL, edited by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee (1930); PARODIES edited by Dwight Macdonald (1960)

Two volumes which I enjoyed in part in my earlier years, and which somewhat disappointed, (again) in part because I, unlike many for whom these books were uniformly delightful, had not always been willing (nor forced) to endure some of the targets of the parody, intentional and unintentional, of the work collected in them. Of course, none of the work collected in The Stuffed Owl was meant to be parody; Lewis and Lee simply ranged across the canon of major and near-major poets in English as it was widely understood in 1930 and chose the most purple and self-sabotaging examples they could find from the likes of Wordsworth and Poe, never afraid to go to ridiculous extremes, and others more tone-deaf, while avoiding, for the most part, the more minor and unheralded poets of the previous centuries. While it's difficult to defend much collected here, in what might well be a pioneering volume of its sort, the book taken in large doses at once is more than a little deadening; the worst examples of fustian from experts in fustian are simply well-refined fustian...but taken a bit at a time, the desired effect, of giving perspective to the enshrinement of these artists as unimpeachable (a ridiculous insistence felt much more sharply in 1930 than now, I suspect) is more thoroughly demonstrated.

Likewise, Dwight Macdonald's compilation was brighter for me in many spots than in others, not least the presumption that he should include untranslated material in French (at least untranslated Cervantes I could make a stab at, but surely few cultured Anglophones could be expected to know Spanish, much less the Castilian of his time, and all such people have a working reading knowledge of French!). But it did send me out after the balance of Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland, and was my first encounter with the entirety of Wolcott Gibbs's "TIME . . . FORTUNE . . . LIFE . . . LUCE" as opposed to a few choice lines ("Backwards ran sentences until reeled the mind" mostly). And it's a bug crusher, if not quite to the same extent of the more-eclectic if similarly hit-and-miss The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose edited by Frank Muir, so some material is simply more likely to be effective than other inclusions for almost any reader. It probably helped, in comparison, that Bennett Cerf "crowd-sourced" his choices for his YA anthology I recalled the other week, quizzing his kids and their friends and others for suggestions, at least in terms of making for a more satisfying reading experience, as well as perhaps oddly a more consistently interesting one, for the much younger me (and, I suspect, for many other readers) than either of these two more ambitious and many ways pioneering anthologies did for me as an adult. These books are rewarding, as well as monuments in their fields, but simply not as thoroughly delightful as one could hope...and while that's probably not why both are in a sort of shadowy in-print status (since this weekly exercise is all about books of some interest to utter brilliance that face such fates--the Cerf is utterly out of print, the Muir is similarly barely in print after initial publication in 1990...clearly, round number years are ripe for such volumes), it does help them both be more admired than loved.

For more of today's selections, please see Patti Abbott's blog. Barring a pre-emptive hurricane or somesuch, I will be the likely gatherer of links to others' reviews and citations next Friday. ("Be there. Aloha." as Jack Lord would peremptorily intone at the end of the teasers for the next week's episode of the original Hawaii Five-0.)


Table of Contents (courtesy of Modern Library.com)

Parodies: An Anthology From Chaucer to Beerbohm—-and After

Table of Contents

Edited by Dwight MacDonald
Preface by Dwight MacDonald

PART ONE: THE BEGINNINGS
After by
MEDIEVAL ROMANCES Geoffrey Chaucer
GEOFFREY CHAUCER Alexander Pope
GEOFFREY CHAUCER W. W. Skeat
JOHN LYLY William Shakespeare
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE William Shakespeare
THOMAS NASHE William Shakespeare
JOHN DONNE Sir John Suckling
GEORGE HERBERT Christopher Hervey
JOHN DRYDEN George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
ROBERT BOYLE Jonathan Swift
AMBROSE PHILIPS Henry Carey
JOHN MILTON John Philips
ALEXANDER POPE Isaac Hawkins Browne
JONATHAN SWIFT Isaac Hawkins Browne
ROBERT SOUTHEY G. Canning and J. H. Frere
THE SENTIMENTAL NOVEL Jane Austen

PART TWO: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
After by
GEORGE CRABBE James Smith
WILLIAM COBBETT James Smith
ROBERT BURNS Shirley Brooks
ROBERT BURNS James Clerk-Maxwell
LORD BYRON Thomas Love Peacock
LORD BYRON J. K. Stephen
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH J. K. Stephen
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Smith
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH John Keats
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Catherine Fanshawe
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH John Hamilton Reynolds
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Lord Byron
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Walter Savage Landor
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Hartley Coleridge
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Bret Harte
EDGAR ALLAN POE Anonymous
EDGAR ALLAN POE Bayard Taylor
EDGAR ALLAN POE Thomas Hood, the Younger
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW Anonymous
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW J. W. Morris
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW George A. Strong
FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON H. D. Traill
EDWARD LEAR Samuel Foote
CHARLES DICKENS Robert Benchley
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON William Aytoun
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Algernon Charles Swinburne
ROBERT BROWNING J. K. Stephen
ROBERT BROWNING Bayard Taylor
ROBERT BROWNING Anonymous
ROBERT BROWNING H. D. Traill
ROBERT BROWNING C. S. Calverley
ROBERT BROWNING J. K. Stephen
EMILY DICKINSON Firman Houghton
WILLIAM MORRIS C. S. Calverley
WILLIAM MORRIS Anonymous
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI A. C. Hilton
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI H. D. Traill
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Mortimer Collins
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A. C. Hilton
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Richard Le Gallienne
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Lewis Carroll
WALT WHITMAN J. K. Stephen
WALT WHITMAN Bayard Taylor
WALT WHITMAN E. B. White
HENRY JAMES Max Beerbohm
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Anthony Brode
RUDYARD KIPLING Guy Wetmore Carryl
RUDYARD KIPLING J. K. Stephen

PART THREE: BEERBOHM--AND AFTER

SOME LEAVES FROM MAX BEERBOHM'S A Christmas Garland
P.C., X, 36 ….............………... R*DY*RD K*PL*NG
Endeavour ..............…………. .JOHN G*LSW*RTHY
A Sequelula to The Dynasts…..TH*M*'S H*RDY
Scruts …………...................... ARN*LD B*NN*TT
Perkins and Mankind ....……...H. G. W*LLS
A Recollection ....………........ EDM*ND G*SSE
PLUS THREE TWIGS:
The Sorrows of Millicent …………….. M*R*E C*R*LLI
The Blessedness of Apple-Pie Beds ..... R*CH*RD L* G*LL*"NNE
The Defossilized Plum-Pudding ........... H. G.W*LLS

Post-Beerbohm:
after by
A. E. HOUSMAN Humbert Wolfe
WALTER DE LA MARE Samuel Hofjenstein
GERTRUDE STEIN Arthur Flegenheimer
THEODORE DREISER Robert Benchley
MENCKEN and NATHAN Robert Benchley
T. S. ELIOT Henry Reed
T. S. ELIOT "Myra Buttle"
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH Edmund Wilson
EZRA POUND Gilbert Highet
ROBERT FROST Firman Houghton
ALDOUS HUXLEY Cyril Connolly
J. P. MARQUAND Wolcott Gibbs
WILLIAM FAULKNER Peter De Vries
ERNEST HEMINGWAY Wolcott Gibbs
ERNEST HEMINGWAY E. B. White
THORNTON WILDER Kenneth Tynan
JAMES GOULD COZZENS Nathaniel Benchley
JAMES GOULD COZZENS Felicia Lamport
JAMES JONES Peter De Vries
JACK KEROUAC John Updike
ALLEN GINSBERG Louis Simpson

PART FOUR: SPECIALTIES
The NONSENSE POEMS IN THE Alice BOOKS, by Lewis Carroll;
with the Originals by Dr. Watts and Other Hands
SOME UNRELIABLE HISTORY, by Maurice Baring
THE REHEARSAL
JASON AND MEDEA
KING LEAR'S DAUGHTER
FROM THE DIARY OF MRS. JOHN MILTON
FRAGMENT OF A GREEK TRAGEDY, by A. E. HOUSEMAN
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
SALAD, by Mortimer Collins
THE POETS AT TEA, by Barry Pain
VARIATIONS OF AN AIR, by G. K. Chesterton
THAT ENGLISH WEATHER, by Ezra Pound and Anon
REVIEWS OF UNWRITTEN BOOKS, by "Baron Corvo" and/or Sholto Douglas
MACHIAVELLI'S DESPATCHES FROM THE BOER WAR
TACITUS'S Scripturae de Populis Consociatis Americae Septentrionalis
TIME . . . FORTUNE . . . LIFE . . . LUCE, by Wolcott Gibbs
The Literary Life on the TIMES
LITERARY LOST & FOUND DEPT., by Robert Benchley
SPEAKING OF BOOKS, by Donald Malcolm
ALF STRINGERSOLL'S REPORT ON BROOKLYN, by William Atwood
W. B. Scott:
CHICAGO LETTER: Agony, a Sense of Plight
GAETAN FIGNOLE: Pages de Journal
Cyril Connolly:
WHAT WILL HE DO NEXT?
YEAR NINE
Paul Jennings:
THE BOY'S GOT TALENT
RESISTENTIALISM
PRIMITIVISM—ENGLISH: from Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
PRIMITIVISM—AMERICAN: from Torrents of Spring, by Ernest Hemingway
SOME EXCURSIONS INTO THE VERNACULAR
A BALLAD UPON A WEDDING, by Sir John Suckling
THE HUMBLE PETITION OF FRANCES HARRIS, by Jonathan Swift
GRANDFATHER'S OLD RAM, by Mark Twain
MUSEUM TOUR, by James Joyce
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN AMERICAN, by H. L. Mencken
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS IN EISENHOWESE, by Oliver Jensen
THE WEST POINT ADDRESS, by Dwight David Eisenhower
INAUGURAL ADDRESS, by Warren G. Harding
THE AVANTGARDE VERNACULAR: by S. J. Perelman

SELF-PARODIES: Conscious
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Max Beerhohm
William Faulkner

SELF-PARODIES: Unconscious
Richard Crashaw
Abraham Cowley
Samuel Johnson
Edward Gibbon
George Crabbe
Lord Byron
Edgar Allan Poe
Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Wordsworth
Robert Browning
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Charles Dickens
Walt Whitman
Rudyard Kipling

SCIENTIFICATION (i): The Parameters of Social Movement, a Formal Paradigm,
by Daniel Bell
SCIENTIFICATION (ii): Struwwelpeter, a psychoanalytical interpretation
by Dr. Rudolph Friedmann

UN PEU DE FRANCAIS:
L'AFFAIRE LEMOINE, par Marcel Proust
Apres Balzac
Apres Flaubert
Apres Michelet
EXERCICES DE STYLE, par Raymond Queneau

THE OXEN OF THE SUN PARODIES, by James Joyce
THREE NONSENSE PLAYS, by Ring Lardner
Dinner Bridge
Clemo Uti (The Water Lilies)
I Gaspiri {The Upholsterers)

APPENDIX: SOME NOTES ON PARODY, by Dwight Macdonald
INDEX


Related link: Seriously Funny edited by Gerald Nachman