Boon: H.G. Wells

[poliphilo]

An odd book, a very odd book- an attack on the literary establishment conducted by sock-puppets, in which Wells tears into his old friend Henry James (a hippopotamus attempting to pick up a pea) and comes close to prophesying the Internet. There's a war on, and what's the point of books? Absurdity jostles whimsy jostles parody,  there are cartoons, there is far-out speculative thinking (attributed to the sock-puppet's sock puppet) and everything is  jammed together and nothing is properly finished in a manner that Wells might have thought of as Shandean and I am tempted to call Pythonesque.  Wells' name appears only as the provider of a teasing introduction: it's a wonder he owned it at all.