Russell Davies
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Parody is the most entertaining form of literary criticism but that doesn’t make it easy to do. In fact it’s probably the hardest of the minor literary forms to get right. Max Beerbohm was a great master of parody, and since then there have been several consistently successful perpetrators of wicked little masterpieces that have summed up a victim’s creative lifetime in a few short paragraphs. My pick for the most able exponent of the art alive now would be Russell Davies. Craig Brown runs him close, but Craig Brown’s powers of hearing are more for posturing mannerisms than for the soul of a style, and his impatient scorn is clearly available to order, as it were, as part of his urge to right wrongs and remove stuffing, whereas Davies gets into action only from a long-nursed urge to get down to the deep structure of someone else’s way of writing.
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Davies’s parody poems in the “Edward Pygge” canon (Ian Hamilton was the founder, and I myself added many pieces to the total) are unmatched for how they are penetratingly accurate without ceasing to be funny –he wields a merry scalpel – but he can also get the fundamental tone of someone else’s prose, as Cyril Connolly once did for Aldous Huxley (“Told in Gath”) and for the radical poseurs of a whole era (“Where Engels Fears to Tread”). Davies could even do it for, or to, James Joyce, who, a mighty parodist himself, counted as the Everest among challenges. Joyce should have been invulnerable, but Finnegans Wakewas asking for it. To answer that big ask, however, it was necessary to possess more than a fair share of Joyce’s linguistic inventiveness, which Davies, I think it plausible to say, actually does. “Pleasurebubble Hubbyhouse” was written at request for a doomed squib of a Christmas booklet called The Anti-Booklist, and it duly disappeared into limbo along with everything else in the same publication. But if Davies were to publish a collection of his fugitive writings – as Beerbohm, Connolly, Paul Dehn and the other masters of these fleeting forms once did – then his compressed version of Finnegans Wake would have to be in it. As things are, I hope that this virtuoso jeu d’esprit can attain some of its deserved permanence by being preserved here, with its creator’s kind permission. Davies – an accomplished, multi-instrumental jazz musician as well as an actor and broadcaster – is so productive in so many fields that he can easily lose track of what he has done, and I wonder if even he quite knows how he managed to plug himself into the linguistic blender ofFinnegans Wake and take over its output for these potent few hundred words. I think it might well be the cleverest piece of critical prose written in my time, and even cleverer for not fitting into any category you can think of. A parody, yes, but a stand-alone prose poem too, and above all a performance, from an unforthcoming man who just happens to be a theatrical prodigy in every genre that he visits. In the first public reading of my mock epic Peregrine Prykke’s Pilgrimage back in the mid 1970s, Davies supplied the voice of every character except the eponymous hero, and naturally I tend to think of that event as his apotheosis. But it could be that the most impressive thing he ever did is right here, one click away.
Pleasure Bubble Hubbyhouse by Russell Davies
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James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (first published 1939), Faber, 1975
Cobblears, I queek, con naught con all. This is a misbegoblin effart from swive of wive to brickfist type and four pines ninetofive in any buddy’s monure. Where’s your woollen tears, I asp you, to be token by’re lurke-wake root sexhundread pagan laing (in your Fibre papalbag) back to Head Case Engineering, wench we came. (No anchor was the stern reply.) Finagles Waste, bejamers joist, cannondrum in excresis, insproats a crumplicadent nexicon of dumpstincts withim yr fighful reportwire. |
He sews seemseeds in the earshell (moultigreyed.) Echo homo, littlesurs! Yet in the upperroof of our puerole Humptyhead, alass, wee stans a ghost. All tug Heather now, Here Comes Excess! (Nutting degrees like digress, my old donski use to shay, God press his iddle-gotten saul.) Well a big fat darty booker it is to be Shaw, and I wouldn’t have the spiers to be waterlogging all the arks and chunderment of openprism reduxdiseased between these greeny backs, so geld me Hobson. Suffixit touché, o gintill redrum, it’s oh, allerline schoolerschrift filluphaben in a therasputin donghell incarnabine. (Otis liftywater I must dyke for it, Father, plash me for I have skimmed. Or shuteye see, blush me, Farber, for I am skint? Hamsters on boastcart, please.) I’ll not abound to say you won’t fine yourself tungling over the odd tibs and bogs that hueffer to the kyries mine pleasurebubble sensehavens of interlarkin dizzypins. Not at Hall, the very tort of it is anaspirin for Deloites of me. Old Joys is a low-undo-himself. (And don’t wee all.) Notwithshandy he guts no eyes with ewers drooling. And why should he, Gott safes the Mark, we cannot all be Hainault Hobcecils scrimbling lists of the midevil sainsburys, we’d all go roust the twins.
But, you interplate (those of you to whom the shap of egremont is heather rising, gold blast you sirs, would you heave the price of a Riles-Royals about yez?) this is no rumtomb teararts billyphant from the Dully Bullygraft! This is Highly Charged Engrishe or I’m a touchmum! How ripe you are, penine interlexapples, I bough to your supearier fudgement. But are you shaun, are you dolgelly convincted we are dwelling with a Wort of Ark and not a Pickforth’s vain of finto seems belonging to a literarty hen’s teeth diva? Hom? You mistumblestand the jeskin? Swerve you right, you anchor! (Part my fringe.)
In the embolism comes it doubt to this: Filigrees Whelk, bejams juice, is a bleeding grant for pores, a hubbyhouse for the aldebarans of the academe, och it’s an obsolete codgeree of your hockmugrandiose christable prankhearse, and all the finn in it is in the parting together (on Joisus’ path) and biggerole in the pollenasonder by ourshelf, misteral stingers that we bee. Sore knackers to Sham and Shawn! Annie Luvya Liverpool a la long term! Abbasso profungus in arsepick! Flaherty-o for the Missus! (The remarque is out of plays, I withdrawl it entimely with sunblest apollogrease.)
Now Boatrace of the Hearties as a Ying Yang, on the upperham, I meal your Potroast of the Alldust as our Yon Mahon, well that’s a dufferin Cathal O’Fish altargodder, Innis?
But, you interplate (those of you to whom the shap of egremont is heather rising, gold blast you sirs, would you heave the price of a Riles-Royals about yez?) this is no rumtomb teararts billyphant from the Dully Bullygraft! This is Highly Charged Engrishe or I’m a touchmum! How ripe you are, penine interlexapples, I bough to your supearier fudgement. But are you shaun, are you dolgelly convincted we are dwelling with a Wort of Ark and not a Pickforth’s vain of finto seems belonging to a literarty hen’s teeth diva? Hom? You mistumblestand the jeskin? Swerve you right, you anchor! (Part my fringe.)
In the embolism comes it doubt to this: Filigrees Whelk, bejams juice, is a bleeding grant for pores, a hubbyhouse for the aldebarans of the academe, och it’s an obsolete codgeree of your hockmugrandiose christable prankhearse, and all the finn in it is in the parting together (on Joisus’ path) and biggerole in the pollenasonder by ourshelf, misteral stingers that we bee. Sore knackers to Sham and Shawn! Annie Luvya Liverpool a la long term! Abbasso profungus in arsepick! Flaherty-o for the Missus! (The remarque is out of plays, I withdrawl it entimely with sunblest apollogrease.)
Now Boatrace of the Hearties as a Ying Yang, on the upperham, I meal your Potroast of the Alldust as our Yon Mahon, well that’s a dufferin Cathal O’Fish altargodder, Innis?