A quick, detailed introduction to the technique of parody.
Chambers (Parody, 2010) returns with a jocular instruction manual for creating and reveling in parodies of all sorts.
The author guides readers through the specific, example-oriented procedure of conceiving, writing and perfecting parodies in this witty, if at times unfocused, satirical manual. He begins with a dissection of three main categories of satire: “banging,” a head-on collision between a thing and its opposite; “binding,” productive tension between a thing and its opposite; and “blending,” the merging of the two. These and other “multistable” categories are explored in light of Chambers’ claim that “all multistable art is parodic, [and] that such art is, in fact, the hallmark of parody.” Chambers is pointed in his championing of parody, citing its generative effects throughout the history of literature: “For nearly two thousand years our forebears learned writing skills by copying, then parodically imitating exemplary texts on their way to flying off on their own.” While such claims are open to debate, the pragmatic approach Chambers employs in teaching the techniques of understanding and generating parodies is refreshingly straightforward. He encourages beginners to try parodying newspaper articles or New Yorker notices, including (sometimes unwisely) many parodies of his own composition by way of example. The book itself operates as a parody of do-it-yourself manuals with similarly grandiose titles. Chambers writes, “What sets the parody apart from mere simple irony (which is certainly present) is its hoaxy duality.” That duality is cheerfully present on every page of this book. Chambers’ own career as a published parodist spanned only three years (1978–1981) and a small handful of venues, but the usefulness of his exercises and insights here speaks of a lifetimes’ study.
A quick, detailed introduction to the technique of parody.Pub Date: March 16, 2012
ISBN: 978-1468139600
Page Count: 142
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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