Borges was once asked to write a blurb for a collection of Cortázar's short-stories. He made a joke about never reading his novels in it, referencing how he himself never wrote one.
Dude was a prick, but an entertaining one. Also, that's very rich coming from the master of labyrinths and mindfucks.
Only criticism: you forgot to make Borges blind. It's his most famous feature, other than being a curmudgeon-y old fuck. Still love his writing, but man was he a prick.
I think I could have told you who wrote the Wodehouse sentence even without his name on it. That one-two punch of the fastidiously precise highbrow setup and the quick, forceful, common-language finish is classic Wodehouse.
I mean the entire comic could just be Twain going after Austen, and as someone who suffered through two of her books in English without getting assigned one of Twain's which I had to seek out on my own...FAIR. http://www.twainquotes.com/Austen_Jane.html
"[Reading Austen] I feel like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel. ... He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians went filing self-complacently along. ..."
I love the idea of Poe as a jingle man. Can you IMAGINE how epic the Count Chocula jingle would be? How insane the General Mills monster cereals would go?
“With the fruits of Frankenberry I pine for cereal… nevermore!” (Doo doo do doo doo!)
Twain's dislike of Austen is strange. Most of his references to her are insults played for humor, and I wish he'd elaborated on it more genuinely. To me, they have always read as writers with a very similar eye for the absurdities of the world, applying it in different cultures and circumstances.
Poe's era was one well known for caustic criticism; He was very famous for his own poison pen in his reviews, which is why I'm not surprised to see other authors hitting back at him.
Comments
Dude was a prick, but an entertaining one. Also, that's very rich coming from the master of labyrinths and mindfucks.
“With the fruits of Frankenberry I pine for cereal… nevermore!” (Doo doo do doo doo!)
https://www.jedleahenry.org/popperian-afterthoughts/2022/2/15/wittgensteins-poker