Scatting across the gridiron, beating Yale.Īnd when I was a youngster, prepping at Newman, I should have been a pair of shoulder pads I quote a few memorable lines from Clark's lampoon “The Love Song of F. She sleeps-eternal Helen-in the moonlight of a thousand years immortal symbol of immortal aeons, flower of the gods transplanted on a foreign shore, infinitely rare, infinitely erotic.)Ī parody by John Abbot Clark, written thirty years later, reveals a conspicuous difference in tone and intention. She sleeps-Priscilla sleeps-and down the palimpsest of age-old passion the lyres of night breathe forth their poignantpraises. Oh not for aye, Endymion, mayst thou unfold the purple panoply of priceless years. Once more the clock chimes forth the hour-the hour of fluted peace, of dead desire and epic love. As the door closes behind him Priscilla sinks back into her chair before the fireplace an hour passes, and she does not move her aunt returns from the Bradfords' and after a few ineffectual attempts at conversation goes to bed alone the candles gutter, flicker, and die out the room is filled with moonlight, softly stealing through the silken skein of sacred silence. Miles is an awfully good egg, really Priscilla. John: It's really awfully funny-but I came here tonight because Miles Standish made me promise this morning to ask you to marry him.
Later, Stewart pokes fun at the novelist's fascination with petting parties and prose poetry: Faustus cried, “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” In all ages has such beauty enchanted the minds of men, calling forth in one century the Fiesolian terza rima of “Paradise Lost,” in another the passionate arias of a dozen Beethoven symphonies. It was of some such yellow-haired Priscilla that Homer dreamed when he smote his lyre and chanted “I sing of arms and the man” it was at the sight of such as she that rare Ben Johnson's Dr. Scott Fitzgerald.” The opening passages concentrate on Fitzgerald's shaky erudition: Stewart's implied criticism is good-humored but relentless throughout.īoth qualities are apparent in Stewart's fourth chapter, “The Courtship of Miles Standish: In the Manner of F. “How Love Came to General Grant,” a classic of the genre, is an amused comment on the bad prose, the improbable melodrama, and the simple-minded piety of Harold Bell Wright. “Cristofer Colombo: A Comedy of Discovery” mocks the tedious extravagance of James Branch Cabell's fantasy, Jurgen. “Main Street: Plymouth, Mass.” reduces Sinclair Lewis's famous novel to absurdity, accurately noting Carol Kennicott's febrile heroics.
Published in 1921, Stewart's deft satire uncovers the ludicrous excesses that lay just beneath the surface of the books America was reading. She sleeps-eternal Helen-in the moonlight of a thousand years immortal symbol of immortal aeons, flower of the gods transplanted on a foreign shore, infinitely rare, infinitely erotic.-Donald Ogden Stewartĭonald Ogden Stewart's A Parody Outline of History provides a humorous but illuminating survey of some major episodes in the literary life of the nineteen-twenties. It is a consciousness of something more than stylistic questions and “taste,” it is a vision, and a vision alone that not only America needs but the whole world.-Hart Crane Chapter I And with this communion will come something better than a mere clique. I am certain that a number of us at least have some kind of community of interest.
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