The Sincerest Form of Ridicule (Pynchon, Parody, and Chandler Again

[alice wellintown]

By ERIC ORMSBY
Literary parody is often described as verbal caricature. It's true
that both parody and caricature rely on the exaggeration of quirks and
idiosyncrasies for satiric purposes. But their differences go deeper.
Caricature plays on the monstrous for comic pay-off; it turns earlobes
into wind-flaps, lips into gaudy sausages. Parody can be just as
crude, but usually it is slinkier, more insinuating; there's something
snugly parasitic in its intimacy. The parodist must inhabit his
victim's voice down to its least inflections—with close and lingering
attention to those very flourishes an author is proudest of—only to
turn the voice to ridiculous effect. The trick is to yoke the
unmistakable manner to a grotesquely disproportionate subject.

Parody is a form of impersonation, obviously, but also collaboration.
What makes it so pleasurable, as Mr. Gross's anthology shows on every
page, is not just the accuracy of the performance, though that's
certainly essential. In the funniest parodies, there is the faint but
unmistakable sense of giddy collusion; and in such improbable duets
the parodist can't always be distinguished from the parodied.

—Mr. Ormsby is a writer in London.


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