Wednesday, February 25, 2009

John Mullan's 10 best parodies in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best parodies in literature.

One title on the list:
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

The tale of Flora Poste's sojourn with her cousins, the Starkadders, at their farm near Howling (it feels remote but is in fact in Sussex) made mock of early 20th-century rural primitivism. There are traces of Hardy and Lawrence, but the main target was the once popular Mary Webb. Webb is forgotten, Ada Doom's clan lives on, and we still talk of "something nasty in the woodshed".
Read about another parody on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue