A Modest Proposal

I love reading about eating children in the morning. This is probably the third time I've read that essay. Still good. There are some other gems in this too like his trolling of astrology and there are some stuff that are okay. I needed some humor, so figured this would be a good choice.

I knew what this was about, but I didn't realize how savage it would be. Incredible stuff.

That was weird... I really had no expectations about this book and had sort of expected it to be a novel, but it was more like a pamphlet, an argumentative essay. And at first I thought it was serious and was quite appaled, until I came to the idea of eating babies and realised it had to be satirical. Not surprising I guess, given the fact that it was written by Swift. I think I should probably re-read it sometime now that I do have an idea what it is about; I didn't like it much, but part of that is because it was so different from what I expected, and that I really thought it was terrible at first, before realising it wasn't serious.Then again, it is really well done, seeing as it did fool me at first...

"A Modest Proposal" is definitely the strongest work here. And given how it is written, I can believe that people reading it today might not understand that it is satire--though how they can miss it being announced as satire on the cover of every volume it is in, in the intro, in every short summary, etc etc, is beyond me.

"An Argument..." and "A Discourse..." both have some good bits. "A Meditation" is clever and very short. "The Battle" requires a background in Swift's contemporaries that I simply do not have (even with the brief notes saying who they were). Also, there are parts of it missing, and there is no way to know how long or important those parts might have been to the story itself. I can see this piece being funny to those who know the many authors mentioned.

So..I didn't read the WHOLE book. Only the essay, but I couldn't find just the essay (couldn't find it on the goodreads...)

From reading just that essay, I would like to read the rest though, he's hilarious.

Ah yes. Jonathan Swift, best known for Gulliver’s Travels (a story based on the corruption he saw around him, in modern times turned into a children's story). And Possibly A Modest Proposal (which I assume is assigned to students as an example of satire). I picked this book up for "A Modest Proposal", which I haven't read since high-school. This Dover Thrift Edition contains a number of other satirical stories - some more known than others. Unfortunately, satire works best when the reader understand the history and politics behind the story - and for me, the stories made logical sense, but I really didn't understand them.

A Modest Proposal, on the other hand - is still a masterpiece in satire. It is worth reading - Jonathan Swift is clearly a talented author - he can make Eating Babies sound both reasonable, and terrifying, at the same time. Basically, if you aren't going to help the poor in any meaningful manner, lets think out of the box to solve this problem...

This 59-page volume includes five of Swift's satirical writings. The well-known "A Modest Proposal" presents a clever plan to cure both poverty and overpopulation in Ireland and supply the rich with some tasty new treats in the process. "A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit" and "An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity in England" deal with various religious topics. "The Battle of the Books" takes aim at the writers and thinkers of Swift's time who would disparage the ancient, classic authors, claiming to have done so much better themselves. There's also the tiny "A Meditation Upon a Broomstick," a deadpan parody that he inserted into a book containing a collection of mini-sermons as a practical joke. (The person he played the prank on, we're told, could not actually tell the difference.)

The continued fame of "A Modest Proposal" is unquestionably well-deserved. It's extremely readable, darkly funny, sharply incisive, and still sadly relevant. The other pieces in this collection were somewhat more difficult going, though, partly because Swift's old-fashioned writing style is rather wordy and convoluted, but mostly because the modern reader (or at least this modern reader) lacks a lot of the cultural context with which to properly appreciate them. This edition did include a number of helpful footnotes, but that's not nearly the same thing as watching a contemporary writer jumping into a debate you're familiar with and skewering people you know.

Still, despite all that, Swift's famous scathing wit does shine through. That's particularly true of "The Battle of the Books" in which he pulls no punches, utterly lambasting his targets with a jaw-droppingly impressive combination of highbrow erudition and low-down trash talk. There's no doubt about it: when Jonathan Swift disses you, you are dissed for the ages.

Rating: This one's hard to rate. It's abundantly clear that Swift was a five-star satirist in his time, but most of these pieces haven't aged all that well, and some of the points he's making honestly seem rather wrong-headed and quaint to me at this late date. Let's call it 4/5.

Humorous - great satire! Although I admit that I read this one to increase my % to goal on 1001 books to read before you die...

This was a short, satirical, dark, humorous, bitter proposal on how to deal with the Irish poor. It leads you slowly in by discussing how concerned they are with the poor and their suffering, and how they need a way to have honest work to support themselves, and how the suffering of children is especially problematic. Then it offers a solution to the problem: If people are largely property of their landlords, and if they are going to be allowed to do nothing but suffer anyway, why not sell the babies as foodstuffs? The first allusion to 'renewable resources' I have come across. Funny, but at the same time sad and occasionally hard to read, at least for me.

I don't get it. What's so funny? I think this us a fine proposal, and easily instituted here in the USA. Eat 'em up, yum.

A satirical essay examining what could be done about the population to available food ratio in Ireland at the time. If you believed it was a serious essay you might have found yourself a little shocked.

Doctor Swift explains the advantages to his proposal as far as to claim that it would be an advantage to have a new dish on the table.

Shocking, short and entertaining.

Brilliant.
An exercise in extended irony, aimed at the English politicians who were willfully ignoring the Irish people devastated by the potato famine.