“‘A Modest Proposal’ and Other Satirical Works”, by Jonathan Swift

59 pages, Dover Publications, ISBN-13: 978-0486287591

As with most people I image, I was familiar with Jonathan Swift’s famous work of satire A Modest Proposal in passing, but had never actually read the whole thing until it was assigned in class. Doing so was easy enough: it’s short, and a quick Google search will bring up dozens of sites where it is reproduced, with annotations, context, etc. The first page of Swift’s 1729 essay describes the problem: the ever-increasing number of destitute Irish, the economic hardships imposed on the nation, and the numerous inadequate and ineffective schemes that had been attempted to address it. There is no alteration in Swift’s very serious and thoughtful tone when he delivers his zinger:

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragoust.

The rest of the essay continues in an absolutely straight-faced manner, laying out economic and dietary calculations, never once hinting that a proposal to raise Irish children for their meat might be anything less than serious. It is the sober, analytical tone that makes this such a brilliant and famous work of satire. For the exceptionally dense and humor-impaired (of whom there were apparently quite a few people back when Swift published it), the only clue may be his bitterly ironic conclusion:

Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of using neither clothes, nor household furniture, except what is of our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: Of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our country, wherein we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: Of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: Of being a little cautious not to sell our country and consciences for nothing: Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants. Lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shop-keepers, who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it.

It amused me to find essays posted even today by people who didn't seem to be quite sure whether Swift was seriously advocating cannibalism. Reading a bit about the publication’s social context does make A Modest Proposal more interesting: Swift wasn’t just condemning the heartlessness of English landlords and expressing sympathy for the bitter plight of the poor, but mocking specific remedies and alternate proposals that were popular at the time. But just reading the essay all the way through is an educational experience, because the imitators and “modest proposals” that have been proposed ever since generally fail to be nearly as witty or intelligent. The whole point of Swift’s satire was that he constructed a very careful argument that invites earnest debate if you just…consider it a serious proposal. While a short piece that is now synonymous with satire, A Modest Proposal is still a perfect example of the form.

“Wry Martinis”, by Christopher Buckley

294 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0679452331

Christopher Buckley probably hates it when his family connection is constantly brought up in reviews – he’s the only child of conservative dynamo William F. Buckley, Jr., FYI – but, frankly, I think he’s profited quite nicely from it, and so why not give credit where it is due? Here was a boy born with a golden dictionary in his hand and money to boot, and then he gets to go to Harvard, work on the National Lampoon, become an editor at Forbes (and do a little junket travel as detailed in one of the more nauseatingly sycophantic articles here), write speeches for the Vice-President, and then becomes a best- selling humorist. Wry Martinis from 1997 is a collection of more than sixty-five journeyman articles from over this time, ranging from the New Yorker to The New York Times to Forbes to the Portsmouth Abbey School Alumni magazine. Touched on briefly are any number of topics such as mad cow disease – could the animals be used to counteract illegal emigration from Mexico? – drunken Yale undergraduates – a growth industry, it seems – presidential debates – which, he observes, would be improved if all involved had three martinis before things got under way – and the Unabomber – the next client of O.J.'s dream team? There are also accounts of hoaxes successfully perpetrated by Buckley, including the well-publicized rumor that an impoverished Russia plans to auction off Lenin’s embalmed corpse. But the section entitled Homage to Tom Clancy takes pride-of-place and is typical of the book’s variety. It begins with a none-too-serious profile of the author written soon after the success of The Hunt for Red October, followed by a parody of Clancy as a U.S. Senator, then a savage review of Debt of Honor – Clancy is “the James Fenimore Cooper of his day, which is to say the most successful bad writer of his generation” – followed by an exchange of actual faxes between an unamused Clancy and a puckish Buckley. As a comic, Buckley frequently suffers from the Saturday Night Live syndrome: his ideas are often funnier than his punch lines. But readers hell-bent on amusing themselves will find laughs enough here.

“Venice: Pure City”, by Peter Ackroyd

432 pages, Anchor, ISBN-13: 978-0307473790

Venice: Pure City is Peter Ackroyd’s love-letter to the Queen of the Adriatic, and there can be few people (Venetian or no) who know Venice better than he…at least, that’s what I think it is, for as to his motivations for writing this book he is silent: there is no introduction or conclusion informing the reader as to why he decided to write the book or, having made such a momentous decision, what he was trying to achieve. In spite countless ideas, musings, opinions and tangents, the result of all of his labors comes over as strangely impersonal. Now, really, who doesn’t love books on Venice? Such a peculiar and miraculous (and devilish) a place was made to be written about, but anyone who reads Ackroyd’s book may well find that he never buys another: these 376 pages constitute a Venetian encyclopedia, answering as they do virtually every question on the subject that one could possibly wish to ask; about Venice’s origins (few people realize that the most sumptuously beautiful city in the world began as a shithole); about the huge importance of its patron saint; about its painting, sculpture and architecture; its trade and commerce, and its constant struggle against the Turks; about its courtesans and carnivals, its pilgrims and tourists; and there are some brilliantly perceptive reflections about the Venetians. Then again. After wading through all of that, one may not feel like reading another word about Venice – ever again.

When describing the beginning of the city Ackroyd is as eloquent as could be hoped for, using a broad palette of words to paint a verbal picture of the early years of the floating city: the watercourse twisting past islets that became the Grand Canal, the palisades among the dunes, the huts of wattle in the marshes, and on and on. Islands were lost to the sea, centers of power shifted, and gradually the city solidified and Venice was finished, in a way London would never be: “The first stone of the great bridge across the Grand Canal at the Rialto was laid on 31 May 1585. The creation of Venice was complete”. That is as about as chronological as it gets, however, for there is a kind of blurring of the timescale throughout, enabling Ackroyd to spread commentary throughout the book hither and yon with only the briefest of looks at the calendar. This also leads him to collapse centuries together and make strange historical judgements, like claiming when the Venetians outrageously sacked their sister-city Byzantium in 1204 and carried off the famous horses to adorn St Mark’s Basilica that this led to the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453 is, therefore, Venice’s fault is…peculiar (250 years is not the blink of an eye, after all).

Venice: Pure City is, then a reading experience rendered all the more agreeable by Ackroyd’s independent frame of mind and skill with words. If this volume is sometimes simultaneously less prescriptive and more grounded in Venice as it actually is, it more than makes up for it in range and realism where the temptation to romanticize is almost palpable.