Frenzied Fiction

Stephen Leacock (1869 to 1944) was a Canadian humorist who also worked as a professor of economics at McGill University in Montreal. He wrote dozens of books, and he was for many years among the most widely read humorists in the English-speaking world. His best known work is Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, but he wrote many collections of shorter pieces, of which Frenzied Fiction, published in 1917, is a good example.

The pieces in this book are mostly parodies and comic essays. Leacock takes an everyday subject or a well-known literary form and exaggerates it until it becomes ridiculous. The titles hint at the range: My Revelations as a Spy, Father Knickerbocker: A Fantasy, The Prophet in Our Midst, Personal Adventures in the Spirit World, The Sorrows of a Summer Guest. Behind the jokes there is often a serious observation about the way people behave, particularly in a period of rapid change.

His humor is that of a good-natured observer, never cruel, and the sentences are carefully built to deliver their punch. Because the writing is so dependent on timing, it is particularly well suited to being read aloud.

The recording is divided into eighteen chapters and lasts about five hours. It is read by volunteers of LibriVox. Each piece can be enjoyed on its own, so the collection is ideal for odd moments, for travel, or for a long evening of laughter. His targets are the fashions of his day, among them the spy story, the spiritualist craze, the city boom and the busy modern worker. Today we can recognize the same fads in new clothes, which gives the pieces a surprising freshness. It is an ideal collection for short moments, since the chapters are brief and independent.