Word: jape
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...with market research: "So I was standing on the corner waiting for somebody to cross me because I'm not allowed to cross by myself. And this lady comes by, and she says, 'Here is a bubble gum sample. Do you chew this brand?'" A clever jape at advertisers becomes a brief bit of high comedy as the listener realizes that what the moppet is describing is a human being going mad from the shame of having to ask little girls questions about bubble...
...brand of authority; her hard prose seems armed with staring, baleful eyes. The reader may shudder in distaste, but those eyes fix and hold him. And yet, while her handling of God-drunk backwoodsmen is based in religious seriousness, it seldom seems to rise above an ironic jape. It is this suggestion of the secure believer poking bitter fun at the confused and bedeviled that lingers in the mind after the tale is ended-rather than the occasional flashes of pity that alone make such a story bearable...
While most of this yarn is expertly comical, Linklater's Scots satire does not sustain the brilliance of, say, Honor Tracy's jape at the Irish, The Straight and Narrow Path. Too many other elements (including Yacky Doo's mawkish death) intrude on the story's essential mixture of fondness and malice. But Author Linklater's entertainment survives its flaws. His most effective jest is at the expense of the reader who, eager to read the imaginary Burns erotica, leafs ahead to find some. The novel is salted with verses, but most of them...