Research Catalog

Title

30 satires / Lewis Lapham.

Author

Lapham, Lewis H.

Publication

New York : New Press : Distributed by Norton, 2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

vi, 263 p.; 20 cm.

Summary

"Widely celebrated for his political essays, Lewis Lapham is a satirist who belongs in the company of Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken, and Mark Twain. Over the last twenty years he has experimented with satire in its several forms - as burlesque, pasquinade, invective, and deadpan jest. This first assemblage of Lapham's satires presents thirty pieces that hold their currency and humor against the tide of social and political change that has engulfed American society in recent times. He reduces to absurdity many of the topics of the day that are often treated portentously - Dickens' A Christmas Carol is retold to praise the virtues of remorseless greed; the hydrogen bomb is introduced as a solemn dinner guest who doesn't play tennis or speak English; gene banks take the form of well-trained pigs that accompany their wealthy owners in the first-class cabins of transatlantic jets."--BOOK JACKET.

Alternative Title

Thirty satires

Subject

• Satire, American

Note

• Includes index.

Contents

Christmas Carol -- The Last Hohenzollern -- Philosopher Kings -- Wall Painting -- Capitalist Tool -- Back to School -- Balzac's Garret -- Traveler's Tale -- Tower of Babel -- The Spring Shows -- Sky Writing -- Jefferson on Toast -- A Man and His Pig -- Italian Opera -- Eyebrow Pencils -- Asset Management -- Natural Selection -- Fatted Calf -- Mixed Media -- Performance Art -- Potomac Fever -- Hugo, Mon Amour -- Tremendous Trifles -- Conventional Wisdom -- Hide-and-Go-Seek -- Shadowboxing -- Compass Bearings -- When in Rome -- Curtain Calls -- Ars Longa, Vita Brevis.

ISBN

1565848462 (hc.)

LCCN

2003050951

OCLC

• ocm52086391
• SCSB-4825825

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries