Parody and Reality

This is a parody from Woody Allen (back when he was funny):

Venal & Sons has at last published the long-awaited first volume of Metterling’s laundry lists (The Collected Laundry Lists of Hans Metterling, Vol. I, 437 pp., plus xxxii-page introduction; indexed; $18.75), with an erudite commentary by the noted Metterling scholar Gunther Eisenbud. The decision to publish this work separately, before the completion of the immense four-volume oeuvre, is both welcome and intelligent, for this obdurate and sparkling book will instantly lay to rest the unpleasant rumors that Venal & Sons, having reaped rich rewards from the Metterling novels, play, and notebooks, diaries, and letters, was merely in search of continued profits from the same lode.

On the other hand, this is apparently intended seriously:

In the words of the American abstract artist, Charles Green Shaw: "Real happiness consists in not what we actually accomplish, but what we think we accomplish."

He is one of the artists featured in an exhibition currently running at the Archives of American Art in Washington.

It is a taxonomist's dream: hundreds of lists drawn up by some of the world's greatest modern artists. Some are scribbled on scraps of paper, while others are elaborately illustrated.

There are lists of ideas, lists of instructions, lists of ambitions, of biographical details, of paintings, of things to do, of colours.

A few years ago, I theorized that reality had been replaced by a very extended episode of Monty Python. I'll have to add Woody Allen to the theory.