To: A. O. Scott

From: Jonathan Swift [stellasdude@gmail.com]

Subj: Gulliver’s Travels

Esteemed Sir:

On my return from the recent shewing of “Gulliver’s Travels,” whereat I was sufficiently fortunate to pass a choice moment on the Red Carpet in the charming Company of Miss Emily Blunt, I find it politick to communicate with yourself on the topick of this Motion Picture. Surely I state what can only be apparent to any man not a Jackass when I observe that it bears little relation to my original Work. Perhaps you construe that my intent in this epistle is to thunder against a grievous misappropriation of my Book, but please be assured that I have no such complaint. An Apple is but an Apple, while an Orange is some other thing.

Apples, it should be noted, figure prominently among the Products attractively displayed in the course of this Entertainment, which passes, if you will permit me to say so, Swiftly enough — not unlike a small, unvexing Kidney Stone. Much display is also made of other Intellectual Properties belonging, like “Gulliver’s Travels,” to The News Corporation, at whose Fox News Channel I have vainly sought a berth for many years, believing that my publick embrace of Conservative Principles and my long service to the Church might find preferment there. But no. Apparently I am viewed in those quarters as a Tory in Name Only, and an Elitist to boot. Nor have Mr. Colbert’s people replied to my earnest entreaties.

But such unhappy Matters need not detain us here. Indulge, rather, my views on “Gulliver’s Travels,” which somewhat cleverly converts my great Satire into a gaudy, puerile Toy. My avowed purpose in composing that text, as any swot who has suffered the Duty and Dullness rampant in our Schools must know, was to employ my modest pen as a scourge against human Folly and the vanities of the Age. Having deemed itself unable to defeat those foes, this rendition of “Gulliver’s Travels” chuses rather to join them.

The purveyors of the Amusement have superadded to the Spectacle a third dimension, the main Effect of which is to expand the already extensive Belly and Buttocks of Mr. Jack Black, a rotund Clown charged with the task of impersonating Lemuel Gulliver. My storied Voyager is thus converted to yet another fellow of slack Ambition and ample Gut, toiling at a Loser Job and pining for his Stella (or Darcy, as she is here called), a woman of quick Intellect and slender Frame, in whose League he is so totally not. Though of course we never are permitted to doubt that this Stella will smile upon him in the end, and do so moreover with the glorious and gleaming Teeth of Miss Amanda Peet.