Brief Diversions: Being Tales, Travesties and Epigrams

This 1922 collection reveals a young J.B. Priestley already mastered of the lethal one-liner and the poisoned vignette. Here you'll find travesties of literary giants, including a gleeful parody of Shakespeare that proves the Bard was perhaps not so different from any other hack chasing a deadline. There are tales where a god suffers the indignities of modern life, where a politician discovers truth has become optional, and where a fiddler leads Death in a dance so seductive that death itself forgets its appointment. Priestley's wit cuts clean: these are not gentle sketches but sharp little instruments, each one calibrated to make you laugh, then wonder if you should have. The epigrams land like epigrams should, with no excess fat. For lovers of the form, this is early evidence that one of England's great observers of human absurdity was already in top form.