My Northern Exposure: the Kawa at the Pole

OF INTEREST TO: fans of humorous fiction In polar travel the last ten miles are invariably the hardest. One is spent and exhausted. Ice conditions north of eighty-seven are increasingly difficult. Absolutely nothing has been done by either Canadian or United States Governments toward keeping the national highways in condition. Raftered floes, composed of sheets of twenty-foot ice, piled up like badly shuffled playing cards, often directly oppose one's progress. MY NORTHERN EXPOSURE: The only highway comparable to the above, in my experience, is the main street of Portchester, N. Y., which has been torn up since the memory of man. Some of the rocks in the middle of this thoroughfare are of volcanic origin. The detours are even worse. -from Chapter V In the 1920s, inspired by the fad for works of real-life adventure and the dry wit of the Algonquin Roundtable, New York architect GEORGE SHEPARD CHAPPELL (1877-1946), egged on by his friend George Putnam of the publishing house GP Putnam's Sons, wrote a series of satirical books about the explorations of the entirely invented Dr. Walter E. Traprock, captain of the yacht Kawa, and his journeys around the world. This, the second spoof in the series, was published in 1922, and details the over-the-top bravery of Traprock and his crew as they encounter dangerous polar ice and ridiculously noble natives. The many accompanying photographs of the expedition are clearly faked, and quite hilarious. The deadpan attitude and ironic pretense of Chappell's writing is as fresh and funny today, in the era of The Onion and Jon Stewart, as it was almost a century ago.