"How Love Came to General Grant" parodies the self-bowlderizing style of Harold Bell Wright. This HBW website says that "readers quickly recognize which characters are intended to be models for good behavior, and which are symbols of evil," as you can tell from scrupulously accurate passages like this:
"Why yes, General," said the hostess smiling uneasily. "It is
just a little champagne wine."
"Madam," said the general, "It may be 'just champagne wine' to
you, but 'just champagne wine' has ruined many a poor fellow and
to me all alcoholic beverages are an abomination. I cannot
consent, madam, to remain under your roof if they are to be
served. I have never taken a drop--I have tried to stamp it out
of the army, and I owe it to my soldiers to decline to be a guest
at a house where wine and liquor are served."
Wright and half of the other parodied authors are completely forgotten today, but the parodies are still funny, because they parody types of writing that are recognizable and/or immortal. Here's the beginning of the first chapter. Who cares who it's parodying, it's hilarious:
That was my first meeting with that admirable statesman Woodrow
Wilson, and I am happy to state that from that night we became
firm friends...
The non-forgotten authors include F. Scott Fitzgerald and Eugene O'Neill. I still have no idea how I came to read the Grant vignette from this book in the first place. Fri Oct 02 2009 22:08 Grant, Grant, Grant:
Aha! I found the Grant story mentioned in the previous entry, by searching for "General Grant" on Project Gutenberg. It's from Donald Ogden Stewart's 1921 "A Parody Outline of History", featuring vignettes from American history "as they would be narrated
by America's most characteristic contemporary authors."
"Madam," said he, turning to Mrs. van der Griff, "Am I to
understand that there is liquor in those glasses?"
On a memorable evening in the year 1904 I witnessed the opening
performance of Maude Adams in "Peter Pan". Nothing in the world
can describe the tremendous enthusiasm of that night! I shall
never forget the moment when Peter came to the front of the stage
and asked the audience if we believed in fairies. I am happy to
say that I was actually the first to respond. Leaping at once out
of my seat, I shouted "Yes--Yes!" To my intense pleasure the
whole house almost instantly followed my example, with the
exception of one man. This man was sitting directly in front of
me. His lack of enthusiasm was to me incredible. I pounded him
on the back and shouted, "Great God, man, are you alive! Wake up!
Hurrah for the fairies! Hurrah!" Finally he uttered a rather
feeble "Hurrah!" Childe Roland to the dark tower came.