... if I get the point: A Bug’s Life. Really. (Hat tip, Roger Miller.)
I mean, we all know that fiction, however fantastic, is grounded in real life. I'm not sure what this has to do with claiming as factually true something that is entirely made up. Especially since, in fact, Kafka did make up Gregor Samsa. Weird.
Satire, parody, I think. Driving home the absurdity of publishers being sucked in by phony memoirs by contrasting it with what might be called the obverse: publishers being sucked in by "phony" fiction. "What?! Franz, bubele, we thought you made up the bug. Now we find out it's REAL? We can't be a party to such deception." At least that's the way it looks here in the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, which we had all along been trying to pass off as a fictional country until our cover was blown by Rudolf Rassendyll.
ReplyDeleteI've passed this article on to Cathy, who is studying the play for Theatre Studies A level. The production she saw recently in London was set so that the floor of the set was the vertical back wall -- bizarre but kind of insect-like.
ReplyDeleteWell, I certainly thought it was a fictional country. Now I'm all confused. As for the parody, I got what he wastrying to do, but I don't think it works - it's the editor in me, I guess. You can take them out of the newsroom, but ...
ReplyDeleteITA and it finally registers why, for me, it fails. What an exquisite array of works from which he might have chosen to express his disgust for the fake truths now being exposed. Had he chosen a human character, Denisovich or Anne of Green Gables, say, and told the truth about the latter, especially (which is the truth, sadly) . . .
ReplyDeleteSecondly, pedestrian predictability, completely undercutting the content (rather than supporting it, as scaffolding ought to do, as his attempt over-tries to achieve). Safe. Nobody gets hurt (and, in retaliation, his career don't take a hit).
Mostly? It jes' ain't funny; and, this editor thinks, What a lost op. The guy oughtta remind himself to put us outta his misery next time he blackens pages since I'm already imagining him with duct-tape around his fingers.