Spring 2019, DC/AP IV, audio & print:

A short, short read, but adding it in for the same reason I still list chapbooks, because they are too. This gorgeous, yet long, treatise on the treatment of the Irish was part of our Metaphysical/Enlightenment two week sampler. I hadn't read it since my early twenties in college, but I deeply loved getting to listen to/read it again. To hear the utter seriousness it's delivered with, while the twist of satire makes you hang on, horrified and intrigued like you are watching a crashing train. ( )

in 2021 enjoying this book. it is one of satirist novel I have Reed. ( )

I didn't know what this was about when I started, so I had the glorious passage from, "Wait, what am I reading?" to "I hope this is satire," to "Totally satire" and internal giggling. And then, I had one of my favorite thoughts after reading or watching a video, "What in the world did I just read/watch?" and thoroughly entertained by the weirdness. ( )

Biting social commentary by way of satire. ( )

Finally found the quiet time to read this again. Written in response to a very real problem, the poverty and starvation in 1729 Ireland, Jonathan Swift puts forth a shocking proposal for a solution that will make you laugh and also cry. Sometimes to make people listen you have to outrage them, and this piece of satire was Swift's last resort--an attempt to make people look in the mirror and see themselves as part of the problem. I remember this being taught to me in high school as the perfect illustration of satire and irony. I'm pretty sure it still holds first place.

With thanks to my GR friend, Tamar, I have come back again to include a reading of this essay by Sir Alec Guinness, and having listened to it, revise my rating to a solid 5-stars.


Sir Alec reads Swift ( )