Life — July 13, 1911 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Universal Parody" - Page Analysis This page is primarily **advertising** (Columbia Records Grafonola and Egyptian Deities cigarettes), with a satirical poem occupying the left column. "The Universal Parody" mocks literary parody itself. The poem describes a "canny miller" who wrote a parody about a bridge and the Khayam (likely Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet). When criticized for unoriginality—that parodies are common—he responds by writing another parody *about* parodies, joking that "a parody on anything" could substitute for any content. The satire targets the prevalence of parody in contemporary literature, suggesting it had become so ubiquitous and lazy that one could parody the concept of parody itself. It's a meta-joke about artistic exhaustion.