A Modest Proposal, & Other Satirical Works by Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pampleteer, poet and cleric who became dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. He's also known for writing Gulliver's Travels.

A Modest Proposal was published in 1729.

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(This post is a review, and not a summary)

This is probably the most hilarious piece of writing I've ever read in my life. Reading this takes me back to when I first discovered Mad Libs as a kid. The approach to humor between Swift's work and Mad Libs is not the same, but what is the same is its inherent level of silliness. It's so silly that it becomes laughable. The style in which it's written is what makes it downright absolutely hysterical. It's written in the language of how one would write in the 18th century, but on top of that it's written very eloquently. It's this eloquence combined with the insane subject matter that gives this work its unique magic. Swift titles his work as a "modest proposal", which is the literary equivalent of a racist starting his sentence with "I'm not a racist, but. . . ."

The proposal is discovered to be a potential solution to the economic turmoil that infects Ireland at the time. The brilliant solution Swift proposes as a way to go about easing the tension plaguing the economy is to sell the children of the poor and impoverished to the rich as food. This way, the poor have more money to invest on themselves as opposed to their children that would otherwise be there if they weren't served as food, while the rich get to enjoy a novel delicious cuisine made up of unwanted babies. It's a win-win. Plus, the poor would get even extra money in their selling of their offspring.    

The explanation towards the proposal is amusing in it of itself, with generous 'guesstimations' and an argument that includes the attempt to persuade the readers in the savoriness of what are dead babies, by his "very knowing American of my acquaintance in London", who is implied to have tried the novel cuisine for himself, providing him with a particularly choice satisfactory dining experience.

It is of my opinion, and I am absolutely convinced, only by my sheer ignorance and only by hunch, that these are the origins of what is known today as deadpan comedy. The wiki definition seems to have it in a form that I cannot better express:

"Deadpan is an adjective, describing a deliberately emotionless and otherwise impassive, matter-of-fact manner. It is also a form of comic delivery in which humor is presented without a change in emotion or body language. It is usually spoken in a casual, monotone, or cantankerous voice, and expresses a calm, sincere, or grave demeanor, often in spite of the ridiculousness of the subject matter. This delivery is also called dry humor or dry wit, when the intent, but not the presentation, is humorous, blunt, oblique,sarcastic, laconic, or apparently unintentional."

As it was funny 300 years ago, it's still as hell of a lot funny today. Modern prominent deadpan comics include people like Steven Wright, Bill Murray, and Nathan Fielder.

The comedy's type is very closely related to anti-humor, where it "is a type of indirect humor that involves the joke-teller delivering something which is deliberately not funny, or lacking in intrinsic meaning. The practice relies on the expectation on the part of the audience of something humorous, and when this does not happen, the irony itself is of comedic value."  

Everybody should read this before they die. They say that laughter is the best medicine, but given the state of medicine in 1729, laughter was probably literally the best medicine they had at their disposal, and this work does absolute justice to that proposition. 

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian novelist who bears the title of the all-time best selling Portuguese language author. He boasts an over 200 million copies sold which includes, his most famous work, being reviewed here.

The Alchemist was published in Portuguese in 1988, and published in English in 1993
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(This post is a review, and not a summary)


Ever since its publication in English and other various languages since the early 90's, this book has slowly climbed its way to the top in being one of the most known stories of international best-sellers. For whatever it means, it has also been on the "most loved" section of books in Barnes & Noble.


In my opinion, as much love and praise as this book gets, I didn't find it too terribly exciting. However, I did like it more than I disliked it. The story begins with the protagonist, an Andalusian boy named Santiago who's a shepherd. I did not get a sense of the time period in which this story takes place, but since it has to do with the practice of alchemy around places like Egypt, it can be anywhere from 3500 b.c. to 1720, which is the time that would give birth to the first remnants of what's known today as chemistry. More precisely, the appearance of characters in the story that practiced Islam and belief in Allah would hint to the time period of the story being at least after 632 CE, which is the date of Muhammad's death.

I can't put any blame on the author for writing a book that's based on chemistry's ancestor, because during the times when alchemy was prominent, so were strange beliefs in all types of numinous phenomena. Perhaps this is why this book doesn't strike me as "too terribly exciting", because the characters are only as intelligent and insightful as can be their intellectuals at the time. This means that we're talking about a pre-enlightenment, or even pre-renaissance period. Now this wouldn't really matter if the book wasn't obviously trying to instill a lesson or moral precept onto you. This is the hint I was getting from The Alchemist, and the lessons the characters were attempting to teach Santiago were paradoxically both powerful and boring.

What do I mean by that? Well, one of the key proposals (and I think I can say with confidence, the main lesson) that kept being repeated throughout the entire book, was to follow "your personal legend", or so to say your dreams. Quite literally actually, because Santiago's personal legend was to make a pilgrimage to Egypt and find a treasure near the pyramids, which he acknowledged (with the help of a gypsy woman) from a recurring dream he had. It is important to give the distinction that the book refers to childhood dreams in specific, and not adult aspirations. This is powerful in the sense that one does not regularly give serious time and thought into what one used to fantasize about as a child, even with the advantage of hindsight as an adult. The book in fact (the character Melchizedek) suggests that it is through some "mysterious powerful force" that we in fact lose sight of our childhood fantasies and dreams when we become adults, so the very becoming of an adult works to one's disadvantage in remembering the kinds of dreams one used to think about as a child. The lesson is also boring in the sense that "go and follow your dreams" cannot be anymore cliche`.

Around the middle of the book, I had found that the constant heavy personification of the heart started to become too cheesy for my taste. There's an infamous fine line between poetic and cheesy, and it's easy to cross that barrier, especially when you're having a full length conversation in the middle of a desert with a guy who claims to be a 200 year old practicing alchemist about how you should listen to your heart.

Like all interesting books, the main character manages to find love throughout the way. She's a girl named Fatima who lives in an oasis, which seems lovely, except that Santiago ends up falling in love with Fatima almost immediately after he meets her. With all the best of intentions the author has in mind to establish a cute spark of love inside the protagonist, I cannot help but think how borderline obsessive that kind of behavior is. He even tells Fatima that he loves her and wants to be with her just shortly after he meets her. It actually made me laugh at how silly the timing was.

However, Fatima was not just some girl put in the story as a means of adding another tested-and-proven ingredient of what makes a popular novel. She provides with an unexpected internal conflict in the protagonist that's integral to the plot. Bad novels put the ingredients in the pot without any care for concentration and quantity, but good novels like The Alchemist tie the ingredients together in a way that make them crucial to the integrity of the plot. Fatima, of course, has a hold on Santiago, which makes him confused on what his heart genuinely wants. I personally loved the conversation he had about her with the alchemist. In a sentence or two, the alchemist told him that if he stays with Fatima and doesn't venture out to obtain the treasure and complete his personal legend, he will regret it, and Fatima will eventually feel guilty for making that happen. However, if he leaves Fatima, ventures out to obtain the treasure, and comes back to Fatima, he'll have the treasure, and he'll know whether Fatima's love was worth it or not based on whether she waited for him or decided to forget about him. The subtext there is that the alchemist told Santiago not to think with his penis. In fact, that should be the title of the book: "Follow your dreams and don't think with your penis."

But aside from all of the things I found cheesy or void of excitement, the rest of the book struck me as a pleasure. The classic adventure story where the boy ventures out to find some treasure is always nostalgic to read. Needless to say, the whole time I was reading I thought that the treasure was going to be a metaphor, but Santiago actually ends up finding an actual physical treasure, which was a nice unexpected surprise. Overall, because of the nostalgia factor of the plot, compounded with the popularity of the book, I found the book worth it to read, and I definitely didn't finish the book with a frown on my face, which is always a good thing.

Russian Literature: What to Read

Russian Authors:

Golden Age:
Leo Tolstoy
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alexander Pushkin
Ivan Turgenev
Mikhail Lermontov
Nikolai Gogol
Ivan Goncharov