Word: parodistic
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...highest forms of criticism. It must duel with the creator on his own ground, and when successful, is calculated to make the Cyrano de Berge-racs of the arts feel that it is not just their noses but their swords that are comic. The true parodist must do more than spoof superficial oddities and quirks of style; he must reach the deeper eccentricities of attitude, summon the author's familiar spirit and transform it into a Halloween mask...
Fancy Needlework. Ernest Hemingway, unfortunate in that his vices have been imitated while his virtues remain his own, is perhaps most vulnerable of all to the parodist's pic. Under the muscular stoicism and the man-of-the-world expertise, there is a vein of provincial naivete, and the celebrated bare style is really an elaborate piece of purl and plain knitting, learned in part from that fancy needlework artist, Gertrude Stein. Far from being economical, it is in fact more prolix than, say, Thomas Mann's high mandarin, a fact proved some years ago by parodists...