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Modest Proposals: The Official Correspondence of Randy Cohen
Why not add club cars to subways, complete with cocktail franks in tiny buns? Why not make cameras that make people look thinner? Why not legalize prostitution on busses and trains? (It would get crime off the streets!)
Modest Proposals is a collection of zany letters to famous people,with their often zanier replies. Randy Cohen has dedicated himself to the outlandish caper, the outrageous suggestion, the out-and-out crazy scheme--the modest proposal. A great step backward in the history of ideas, Modest Proposals asks why we have never sold frozen yogurt to North Africa, or why dishwashers and laundry machines have never been combined (the GE Pots and Pants Scrubber?), and like Jonathan Swift’s famous suggestion that children be eaten in times of famine, Modest Proposals is guaranteed to shock some people, while giving others a bellyful of laughs
Randy Cohen ls a New York-based humorist whose previous books are Easy Answers to Hard Questions (1979) and Why Didn't I Think of That (1980). He is a nice person, but a very strange guy.
Modest Proposals is a collection of zany letters to famous people,with their often zanier replies. Randy Cohen has dedicated himself to the outlandish caper, the outrageous suggestion, the out-and-out crazy scheme--the modest proposal. A great step backward in the history of ideas, Modest Proposals asks why we have never sold frozen yogurt to North Africa, or why dishwashers and laundry machines have never been combined (the GE Pots and Pants Scrubber?), and like Jonathan Swift’s famous suggestion that children be eaten in times of famine, Modest Proposals is guaranteed to shock some people, while giving others a bellyful of laughs
Randy Cohen ls a New York-based humorist whose previous books are Easy Answers to Hard Questions (1979) and Why Didn't I Think of That (1980). He is a nice person, but a very strange guy.
122 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1981
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June 12, 2020
What if a New York author/humorist didn't seem to understand the difference between Susan B. Anthony, 19th-Century political activist and Susan B. Anton, leggy 20th-Century supermodel, and proposed that the latter's likeness be put on paper currency and not a dollar coin? What if the same guy proposed, in all apparent sincerity, that GE combine its dishwashing and laundry functions for the home and produce the "pots and pants scrubber"? How about club cars for the New York subway system, serving teeny pigs-in-blankets and thimble-sized liquor?
Randy Cohen did all this and more back in 1981, before e-mail invaded the American home, and the results are just as funny now as they were back in the snail-mail era. But beware: sometimes the victims of Cohen's satire replied, and gave as good as they got!
A highly recommended book. Also consider: Kotter's Back: E-mails from a Faded Celebrity to a Bewildered World, for similar smart-assery.
Randy Cohen did all this and more back in 1981, before e-mail invaded the American home, and the results are just as funny now as they were back in the snail-mail era. But beware: sometimes the victims of Cohen's satire replied, and gave as good as they got!
A highly recommended book. Also consider: Kotter's Back: E-mails from a Faded Celebrity to a Bewildered World, for similar smart-assery.
Displaying 1 of 1 review