Nonsense Novels sends up the silliest conventions of the ghost story, the detective story, the rags-to-riches story, the adventure story, the shipwreck story, and, of course, the story itself. Among other things. Here the close cultivation of clich� yields a bumper crop of absurdity and the utterly ludicrous turns up at every new twist of the tale.
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Nonsense Novels sends up the silliest conventions of the ghost story, the detective story, the rags-to-riches story, the adventure story, the shipwreck story, and, of course, the story itself. Among other things. Here the close cultivation of clich� yields a bumper crop of absurdity and the utterly ludicrous turns up at every new twist of the tale.
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This book is a send-up of various different literary genres: the detective story, the ghost story, the rags-to-riches story, etc. It?s very humorous and much better than the book I?d started before it, which deals with the supernatural, only not so amusingly.
I?ve read literary parodies before now. But those tend to deal with specific books and authors. Mr. Leacock decided to write books that parody style rather than target certain authors. It is a gentle poke at the inherent flaws that leave these genres open to ridicule. Nonsense? Yes. Foolishness. Perhaps not so much.
