Road-alikes
My friend Ben Segedin recently alerted me to Jacob Lambert’s very funny “The Road: A Comedic Translation,” published on The Millions, which I missed the first time around. It’s a highly accurate skewering of Cormac McCarthy’s distinctive prose style. (Or should I have written, “prosestyle”?)
Later in the day the boy turned to him. Can you tell me about apostrophes?
What do you want to know about them?
I dont know. Where did they all go?
I dont know, the man said, and it was truth. He didnt know where all the apostrophes had gone.
Ben knew I would appreciate the humor as, last May, I published my own parody of The Road, called, “The Read,” in Booklist. Doing a quick search to see if Road parodies were any kind of trend, I stumbled across these incredibly kind words on Read Red. (And to think a colleague queried my use of “unadhorn”!)
I’m a big fan of The Road — heck, I was one of the first to go on record calling it a “masterpiece” — but you know what they say: parody is the sincerest form of flattery.
Well, if they don’t say that, they should.