Here's a little parody I wrote a while back. (It was 1987.) I have to set it up first: The premise is a writer has sent his manuscript to a bunch of dead writers. And he's gotten a few answers. This is one:
LETTER TO CHARLES SATTERTHWAITE PENWRIGHT (Upon Receipt, in the Beyond, of his Manuscript)
88 Roundabout Road
Circles-Within-Circles
December 17th, 1987
To Mr. Charles Penwright:
May I convey my hope that my translator, that good Anglo-Saxon woman, will convey, in her turn, my meaning, as I trust she will?
I had been more than exceptionally busy answering, having finished reading them, the letters which lay in a pile upon my desk, when, ultimately, I arrived at yours, which, by mischance, I had left unread at the bottom of that pile.
Can I hope to tell you what it is to hold the pages graced by the graphite from your pencil? Can I impress upon you what it was like to read those grace-notes of language? Well, just as Mephistophiles described Hell to Faustus, I'll attempt to give you a sense of what I went through. Prepare yourself to be prepared.
I refer not merely to the faded quality of the graphite when I say that what you write is substantially light. And just as your pencil's particles sparkle with, at best, a dull lustre, so do the words shaped in its trail as it travels across the page. Your writing is lightweight and dimly lit, as paradoxical as that may seem to you to be.
But I do make appeal to you that you not be overwhelmed by these truths I so crudely utter. Life is made of such paradoxes as that one to which I have made reference at the end of the above paragraph. Should we not call it; life; ironic? You, perhaps, should, in your secret heart, think of life as so; for such a revelation of reflection might show, if abashedly, in your sentences.
I imagine, as I imagine one must, simply put, imagine, that you dislike me for saying what I have, in so many words, said. Please forgive once more my necessary crudeness.
And please, once more again forgive me, as I have neglected to put at the beginning of this letter, as would be customary, this question to my addressee: How are you? Perhaps there is something of poetic justice in my being made by the forces of nature to look bad when I put such a question; such a formality of courtesy; at the end of this epistle. It is just that, Penwright, I was in an enthusiastic rush to express my, and I find myself obliged to use the word, though to you it must be of but slight significance, contempt.
LETTER TO CHARLES SATTERTHWAITE PENWRIGHT (Upon Receipt, in the Beyond, of his Manuscript)
88 Roundabout Road
Circles-Within-Circles
December 17th, 1987
To Mr. Charles Penwright:
May I convey my hope that my translator, that good Anglo-Saxon woman, will convey, in her turn, my meaning, as I trust she will?
I had been more than exceptionally busy answering, having finished reading them, the letters which lay in a pile upon my desk, when, ultimately, I arrived at yours, which, by mischance, I had left unread at the bottom of that pile.
Can I hope to tell you what it is to hold the pages graced by the graphite from your pencil? Can I impress upon you what it was like to read those grace-notes of language? Well, just as Mephistophiles described Hell to Faustus, I'll attempt to give you a sense of what I went through. Prepare yourself to be prepared.
I refer not merely to the faded quality of the graphite when I say that what you write is substantially light. And just as your pencil's particles sparkle with, at best, a dull lustre, so do the words shaped in its trail as it travels across the page. Your writing is lightweight and dimly lit, as paradoxical as that may seem to you to be.
But I do make appeal to you that you not be overwhelmed by these truths I so crudely utter. Life is made of such paradoxes as that one to which I have made reference at the end of the above paragraph. Should we not call it; life; ironic? You, perhaps, should, in your secret heart, think of life as so; for such a revelation of reflection might show, if abashedly, in your sentences.
I imagine, as I imagine one must, simply put, imagine, that you dislike me for saying what I have, in so many words, said. Please forgive once more my necessary crudeness.
And please, once more again forgive me, as I have neglected to put at the beginning of this letter, as would be customary, this question to my addressee: How are you? Perhaps there is something of poetic justice in my being made by the forces of nature to look bad when I put such a question; such a formality of courtesy; at the end of this epistle. It is just that, Penwright, I was in an enthusiastic rush to express my, and I find myself obliged to use the word, though to you it must be of but slight significance, contempt.
I am, as ever,
Thomas Mann
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