Pun Salad

Another deep dive into the non-fiction TBR pile. (I'm really making inroads! Only 15 books on there now!) The copyright on this book is 2000, and I think I got it for a Christmas present sometime after that. Thanks much, to whoever gave it to me.

It is a collection of 15 brief parodies of literary works, starting with—guess what—the Iliad. Each is written (sort of) in the style of the parodied work. I had previously read 7 of the target texts, but this didn't seem to affect how much I was amused by Nagan's takes, one way or the other.

I found the results uneven, but I wouldn't be surprised if other readers were amused (or not) by pieces that left me cold (or found me chuckling). Humor is funny that way. In addition to humor being funny in the "ha ha" way.

For example, I liked this from the 1984 chapter:

… but I got all the way through the Sense and Sensibility chapter without cracking a grin.

Also good: The Divine Comedy written in limericks. The inscription on the gate of Hell:

COME THROUGH ME TO THE SORROWFUL CITY.
COME THROUGH ME AND FORGET ABOUT PITY.
    EVERY LAST DOPE
    MUST ABANDON ALL HOPE
WHEN THEY PASS ON INTO ETERNITY.

This made me wonder if Nagan had written anything else. Nothing I can find. Maybe he's living off the royalties of this book; it's still in print. He has a long-defunct website justmorons.com, and seems to have moved to Denmark. (Maybe he's researching a parody of Hamlet.)