Amanda McKittrick Ros: Greatness Beyond Parody?

Once again, the Gypsy Scholar turns to his greater peer, Dr. H. Albertus Boli, for guidance in noetic matters, this time for advice on great literature well worthy of the lengthy time invested in reading it. Guidance was found in Dr. Boli's reply to another reader's query as to whether anything lies beyond the abusive power of parody:

Of serious works, . . . there are few that are beyond parody. But such works do exist, and they are invariably the works that are their own best parodies. The works of Amanda McKittrick Ros are beyond parody, for example, because no parody could ever hope to equal the sheer unlikeliness of the original.

To my great shame, I'd never heard of Ms. Amanda McKittrick Ros, but a lady with such an extraordinarily resonant name must surely be the foresworn great writer, a peerless writer great enough to parody her own great writing even when no other great writer could ever prove great enough to equal it! Such a great writer must be capable not only of great self-parody but also of all great literary styles, as Dr. Boli's words assuredly imply. I subsequently (and gratefully) followed a hyperlink graciously provided by Dr. Boli -- and I was not disappointed! I therefore posted for Dr. Boli a note:

I must thank Dr. Boli for introducing me to the novelist Amanda McKittrick Ros, a true literary genius, as evidenced by the opening line to IRENE IDDESLEIGH:

SYMPATHISE with me, indeed! Ah, no! Cast your sympathy on the chill waves of troubled waters; fling it on the oases of futurity; dash it against the rock of gossip; or, better still, allow it to remain within the false and faithless bosom of buried scorn.

In the few words to this series of parallelisms, Ms. Ros impressively establishes herself as a novelist of ideas, for she quickly, if subtly, takes issue with the widespread belief in progress, treating that secular hope as nothing but gossip, and scorning the troubled waters of the future's so-called 'oases'!

I can scarcely restrain myself from immediately reading this novel's second sentence, but that must await another day since the first sentence surely deserves still more intellectual rumination, for I do not think that I have yet reached bottom there.

Moreover, such restraint from further reading serves as a moral lesson, and the longer one restrains, the greater the lesson, so I shall endeavor to make this restraint lifelong . . .

Dr. Boli graciously (if merely implicitly) accepted my grateful thanks and generously allowed it to be posted in his great, online Celebrated Magazine!

Where all, both great and small, may read . . .