Spectator Competition: Beg to differ

In Comp. 3350 you were invited to write a refutation of a well-known line from literature. Ian Jack once imagined quibbling with Jane Austen over ‘a truth universally acknowledged…’: ‘“Universally”, Miss Austen, even among pederasts with good fortunes, or among the heathen races?’ Poetry dominated, which is reflected in the winning entries (£25 to each). Pats on backs to Tracy Davidson, D.A. Prince, Nicholas Lee, Sylvia Fairley and others.

The unexamined life is most worth living:
I implore you, feel the gusto in the Now.
There’s so much to do, and Time is unforgiving,
You’ll never figure why we’re here, or how.
Leave experiences quite unmediated,
Surf that sense-data as if it were a wave;
There’s a world outside yourself you’ve underrated:
Don’t let introspection lull you to the grave.
It’s thumb-suckers’ comfort only, self-absorption,
Scrap those navel-gazing theories you revolve.
Face the world instead; it’s out of all proportion,
Like an ocean into which all selves dissolve.
Let examiners continue their dissections,
As they tear themselves apart, just turn away
For the Now is beckoning from all directions:
Come unblinking and unthinking out to play.

Adrian Fry

Essentially a tragic age?
No, comic, I would say:
John Thomas rising from the page
While making new-mown hay –

Lady Jane, and dialect,
While joining in a jiggle –
And Clifford, who does not suspect –
My goodness, what a giggle!

Refuse to take it tragically?
Well, I for one do mourn
That Lawrence, almost magically,
Reduces all to corn –

Life’s an existential jest:
Does that sound rather callous?
It saddens me though, when undressed,
To dwell upon the Phallus.

Bill Greenwell

‘My dear Mr Bennet, have you heard Saltburn is to be let at last?’ Mr Bennet replied that he had not.
‘But it is, and a young man of not thirty years, with a good fortune, is to take it. He has visited with his friend Mr Quick, lately down from Oxford. We must surely attend one of their parties.’
‘Perhaps the young men will prefer to be alone.’