In Competition No. 2943 you were invited to submit a review of a well-known work of literature that has been written by a comically inappropriate reviewer.
Honourable mentions go to Nicholas Stone and John O’Byrne, who let Donald Trump loose on The Odyssey and Brave New World. Jane Moth and Frank Upton also caught my eye. The winners take £25; the bonus fiver is Bill Greenwell’s.
As far as one can see, Mr Kafka’s preliminary disquisition on jurisprudence, entitled The Trial, is a masterly collocation of facts and opinions, skilfully edited together, with all the administrative detail very finely observed, and the ipso facto very well distinguished from the post hoc ergo propter hoc, while the amusements are kept to a respectable minimum, as befits the deliberative character of the officials who are responsible for the responsible offices, all of which are perfectly in keeping with what one would expect in such a very particular case as this, and it is in its very particular particularity that Mr Kafka hits the appropriate nail on the appropriate head, striking downwards rather than upwards with decisive and vigorous determination, in such a way that I for one would be more than pleased to see further chapters the author may write on this subject, in continuance of the theme.
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