'Poon Readies Parody Bombshell; Will Take Aim at College Guides

Hoping to capitalize on record numbers of college applicants and a glut of college admissions and preparation books, the Harvard Lampoon plans to publish a college guide parody next year.

The semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine has a deal with Time-Warner to publish a 200-page parody in the fall of 2000, Lampoon President Matthew C. Warburton '00 said last week.

Nine Lampoon editors are in Cambridge for the summer to write the book, which they expect to finish by the end of the summer.

The Lampoon--which Warburton said received a "robust advance" from Time-Warner--is hoping to tap into the millions of dollars spent on college preparation books every year.

"It's going to be marketed for high school kids who are trying to get into college, and their parents," Warburton said. He would not say what the sales projections for the book are, but did confidently predict that "my mom is going to buy like five copies."

The book will parody all aspects of the college experience, he said, from the SATs to the first-year fifteen.

The new book won't be the first time the Lampoon has ventured into the college guide market. Twenty years ago, the organization released the Harvard Lampoon Big Book of College Life, which even today is holding steady at number 452,669 on the amazon.com sales list.

But Warburton said changing times have rendered the 1978 classic obsolete.

"It was produced before the SAT's were recentered," he said. "So we scrapped that, because the world's a different place from 1980. [The new book] is the spiritual successor to the Big Book of College Life."

Warburton said the new parody is coming along smoothly--he boasted the Lampoon "could write a 1,000-page book at this point if we needed to"--but did admit that the project had created some tensions among the 'Poonsters sequestered for the summer in the organization's Bow Street castle.

"The greatest creative tension is that I have personally written about 180 pages of [the book]--and all of that's going in," he said. "That leaves what--two pages each for the rest? If you take the 100 pages they've written and condense it down to two pages, that's going to be the funniest part of the book. I mean, it has to be--the law of averages or something."

Warburton issued a special statement for summer school students who--perish the thought--might already be looking ahead to the college application process.

"I'm going to give the students at Harvard Summer School the secret to being accepted to Harvard University," he said. "To paraphrase the Backstreet Boys, I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did--as long as you're valedictorian and captain of the lacrosse team."