Art Attack: Names in Satire

Satire is especially interesting because it connects literature to realityand comments upon and raises questions about morality, psychology,and social dynamics. It creates dual audiences, the attacked and the attackers but also those who get the joke and those who do not--.from the Preface In ART ATTACK you will learn how to get the joke when names are sticks and stones to break the bones in prose and verse and drama. You will see all the many techniques at work (with hilarious examples) in the works of such American writers as Ludwig Bemelmans and S. J. Perelman and such British satirists as Evelyn Waugh, Tom Sharpe, Anthony Burgess, and Martin Amis (whose terrorist attack on New York in Money was devastating). Art Attack ranges from squibs and newspaper columns ('Peter Simple') to major works of eighteenth-century comedy to modern literature. You will see satire in long and short novels, parody and burlesque, even vulgar folklore, what Philip Roth calls 'moral outrage transformed into comic art' in a variety of attacks and techniques. I have long shared [Ashley's] recognition of the fact that the use ofsignificant names is one of the most efficient and effective rhetoricaltechniques that an author can use to make points--. Ashley's excellentbook [shows]--authors are ready, willing, and with the use of namesand other devices very able to warn us of error and threaten us withdire consequences if we do not listen to their warnings.--Prof. Don L. F. Nilsen (Arizona State University), Executive Secretary, International Society for Humor StudiesArt Attack is not only about a wonderful selection of great wits but it iswritten by a great wit. I learned a lot but most of all I laughed loud and long. -- Louis A. de Montluzin