Tricks of the trade — Edition Insights

Mimicry as Analysis

The first section, 'How They Do It,' demonstrates Squire's ability to capture the essence of a writer's style through exaggeration. For instance, his parody of H. Belloc opens with a nursery-rhyme refrain—'Hey diddle, Ho diddle, Do'—that echoes Belloc's fondness for jaunty, repetitive rhythms and Sussex-themed content. The lines 'A taste in beer I've certainly got, / A very fine taste that the Jews have not' mimic Belloc's blend of personal confession and provocative assertion. Similarly, the parody of John Masefield (not fully excerpted) likely targets his nautical, earthy diction. Squire's method is to isolate a few key features—repetition, subject matter, syntactical patterns—and amplify them until they become both recognizable and absurd. This approach treats parody as a form of literary criticism, revealing the 'tricks' that define a writer's craft.

Imagining the Canon Anew

The second section, 'How They Would Have Done It,' is more speculative. Squire asks what would happen if Wordsworth had written Masefield's 'The Everlasting Mercy,' or if Swinburne had tackled Macaulay's 'Lay of Horatius.' The Wordsworth parody substitutes Masefield's raw narrative with meditative blank verse, inserting phrases like 'It has been my joy / To rove the hills and vales' and a moralizing tone that culminates in 'meditating much / About the single transferable vote.' The Swinburne parody, by contrast, is alliterative and breathless: 'May the sword burn bright, may the old sword smite, that a myriad years have worn and rusted?' Squire's choice of target poems is deliberate—each is iconic enough that the stylistic transplant creates a jarring, illuminating effect. The reader sees not only the original poem but also the contours of the imposed style.

Pace and the Parodic Voice

Squire's parodies vary markedly in pace, reflecting the tempo of the original authors. The Belloc imitation moves with a skipping, song-like rhythm, while the Wordsworth parody slows to a deliberate, ruminative crawl. The Swinburne pastiche accelerates into a frenzy of alliteration and exclamation. This attention to pace is central to Squire's method: he understands that a writer's voice is partly a matter of speed and breath. The parody of Henry James (listed in the contents as 'If Henry James had written the Church Catechism') would presumably replace the catechism's crisp questions with Jamesian circumlocutions and qualifying clauses. By exaggerating these temporal qualities, Squire makes visible the often-unnoticed pacing that shapes a reader's experience of a text.

Readers approaching Tricks of the Trade will find it rewarding to read the parodies alongside the original works Squire targets—Masefield's 'The Everlasting Mercy,' Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome,' and others. The book's humor depends on familiarity with the source material, but its insights into style and voice are accessible even to those who know the originals only by reputation. Squire's parodies are a masterclass in close reading, demonstrating that imitation can be the sincerest form of literary criticism.

There’s something about watching a writer inhabit another’s voice—Squire’s parodies feel less like mockery and more like affection, a kind of knowing nod. It stayed with me like a half-remembered joke. That same warmth lingers in Irish Wit and Humor Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell — Themes and Context, where wit isn’t sharpened against people, but shared among them.