Satire: Writing it well: Melanie Spiller exults in Jonathan Swift, seconds with Sam Johnson, asking who's still doing it well?

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Originally published May3,2k6 on refWrite page 3.
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Has all the thawt-space (denkraum) for good political satire in the English language been occupied by the Greats already long ago? That's the question that emerges from wordsmith Melanie Spiller's musing on Jonathan Swift and his Gulliver's Travels which hit the h+water mark for the genre at its outset in our tongue, it seems. She orients us to her question, to Swift, and to Gulliver's first adventure in her article Writing Political Satire on Office Zealot, where you mite not expect the theme:

Does anybody write satire anymore? Oh, I don’t mean satire of the Saturday Night Live ilk. I mean the really writing a good tale that is part parable, part morality play, and a hundred percent tongue in cheek. Did satire come to an untimely end with the likes of Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift?

Let’s look at Gulliver’s Travels, shall we? Let’s see what a miracle of satire it really was, and then maybe one or two of you, gentle readers, can tell me about any comparable satire written by our own contemporaries. I’d sure like to know about it if it’s still being written.

Okay, here’s the story of Gulliver in a nutshell, in case you haven’t read this since you were 12 (it deserves an adult reading, for sure): Lemuel Gulliver, a failing businessman and surgeon, is shipwrecked. He awakens to find himself tied to the ground by tiny threads. His captors are the itty bitty Lilliputians and are prone to violence, scurrying all over him to secure him. They feed him at great expense (he consumes more than a thousand Lilliputians could) and he is presented to the emperor as a form of entertainment. Despite his captivity, the Lilliputians use him as a weapon against the enemy during a war about a silly principle (the proper cracking of an egg). Gulliver is convicted of treason when he urinates to put out a fire in the royal palace. The emperor pardons him at the last minute and he trots off to the land of the enemies, where he builds a boat and sets sail for home.

Of course, that's just the first of Gulliver's four adventures, as mentioned. But let the part stand for the whole - that special form of metaphor called "metonymy" (there are others too, as when the whole is used to substitute for the part, etc). We get the concreteness of Swiftian imagination, in one thumbnail.

But more largely, there's a great societal issue being explored, litely reduced to amusing terms, without crude thrashing and bashing as some satirists resort to, quite as a reflex action, these days.

Thru-out her piece, Melanie keeps inquiring whether her readers are aware of anyone writing political satire with a deft touch of excellence in the genre today. I've been wondering about this as well. I know that in cartooning, the witty USA-born Israeli, Yaakov Kirschner (who is sometimes carried on refWrite's frontpage) has that deft and yet telling touch; he deals with the most searing topics in a way that muses us as he amuses us. A fine art in itself! But I wonder, like Ms. Spiller, is anyone writing satire that can appeal to a wide audience, a morally-sensitive audience that doesn't want to hide from difficult issues but doesn't want to be drenched in much and curses while journeying into a writer's subject matter. I'm wondering if there's a niche of satire-writing that a wide Christian readership can look for, and be provoked by, and not simply slammed by compulsive insulters? Maybe I should raise some money, and offer an annual prize in satire written with a Christian readership in mind who are up to the provocations of a latterday Swift. - Anaximaximum

satire, swiftjonathan, johnsonsamuel, satirecontemporary, satireprizeannual

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