Word: swiftian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Tranquil Sleep. The same unsettling effect is produced by the Swiftian irony that Goffman brings to his appraisal of the human scene. To him, a hanging is a social event, circumscribed, just like a one-day sale or a picnic, by rules calculated to make the performance go smoothly. For this reason, he says, a "table of drops" based on body weight was worked out by long experience "so that the length of the free fall would neither leave the man to wriggle nor tear off his head." The true stagecraft of a funeral, says Goffman, is found "backstage," away...
...does or he doesn't. Simpler souls may be content with noting that Tattersall has a vested interest in failure. And so does De Vries, for Hank's hegira through a series of professions allows the author to lampoon various American scenes and sideshows, sometimes with Swiftian savagery...
Less than Swiftian (though not without an occasional flicker of appeal) are Shapiro's modest proposals, which include raising the minimum age for drivers' licenses to at least 30, denying foreign travel to children unless granted as a privilege from their school, putting dissidents on reservations, and destroying all concepts of adolescence. He cannot be serious; yet one pokes vainly through Shapiro's overcooked simplifications for a scrap of wit or irony. Finding none, the reader concludes that To Abolish Children is little more than a late-middle-age temper tantrum...
Galbraith's humor usually registers somewhat below Swiftian satire, as when he writes that the Air Force's contingency plans for Puerto Santos calls for bombing "with maximum emphasis on winning the hearts and minds of the people." Much of the novel bears this slightly self-satisfied straining for effect. As a glimpse of Foggy Bottom, The Triumph has its uses; but its tone begins to grate under the suspicion that the author is enjoying himself more than his performance justifies...
PLANET OF THE APES. This screen version of Pierre Boulle's abrasive science-fiction fantasy has replaced Swiftian satire with self-parody; even so, $1,000,000 worth of ape makeup and costumes covers a lot of blemishes...