The Oxford Book of Parodies

The Oxford Book of Parodies, by John Gross, Oxford University Press, RRP£16.99, 416 pages

The critic FR Leavis disliked parody on the grounds that it “demeaned” the writer being held up to ridicule. A moment or two in the company of John Gross’s sparkling new compendium demonstrates how wrong Leavis was – both in his assumption that the artistic temperament is sacrosanct, and in his belief that every parody is written with the aim of cutting its subject down to size.

There are any numbers of writers who ought to be lampooned good and hard. Yet quite a few parodies end up by exalting a literary reputation long after conventional means have failed. Who, for example, would remember the minor 1930s poet and Bright Young Person Brian Howard (1905-58) if it weren’t for Cyril Connolly’s Where Engels Fears to Tread, a withering exposure of Howard’s pretensions which also holds some of Connolly’s foibles up to the same merciless light?

Where Engels Fears to Tread is absent from The Oxford Book of Parodies, which is a pity, as in general Gross’s book passes the first great anthologist’s test – putting in everything the reader expects to find, and a whole lot more besides – with flying colours. To compensate, a shrewd introduction chews over the question of first principles. Here Gross notes that the finest parodists “are masters of the slight stylistic distortion, the barely visible tweak”, citing a line from Henry Reed’s skit on Hardy – “It were better should such unbe” – which is possibly too Hardyesque even for its original. There are some useful remarks on pastiche – an imitation of an existing text – and burlesque, which he defines as adapting high literature to low ends.

Along with Beerbohm, Bradbury and the Knox Brothers, come all manner of things one had forgotten about (such as Osbert Lancaster’s Drayneflete Revealed) and a variety of unconsidered trifles snapped up by Gross during his 50-year career as a literary man-about-town. These include John Clarke’s parody of Edward Lear (“There was an old man with a beard/A funny old man with a beard/He had a big beard/A great big old beard/That amusing old man with a beard”), and Anthony Powell’s rewrite of “Little Jack Horner” (by Alan Alexander), which begins: “Horner had got himself established as far as possible from the centre of the room ... ”

Gross notes the critical presumption that most parodies are ultimately affectionate, only to conclude that many “are undoubtedly motivated by exasperation or contempt”. Certainly, the examples of Craig Brown’s work reproduced here show not only a genuine sense of animus but also how parody transcends straightforward dislike to become an aesthetic retort.

Brown maintains that the 21st-century parodist’s job is much harder because so much in contemporary life, from John Prescott’s speeches to the Spice Girls, is “beyond parody”. But this complaint has been made since the first Coptic scribe sat down to spoof the book of Genesis. As this book demonstrates, it’s not dead yet.

DJ Taylor is the author of ‘At the Chime of a City Clock’ (Constable)