Dept. of Don’t know whether to laugh or cry
Score one for the Chronicle’s copy editors today with their headline in the wine section, Mastering the margarita, which is supposed to ring a bell for Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita (which has nothing to do with the Mexican party beverage and not a whole lot to do with the cat on its cover, but is really a satire of 1930s Soviet repression).
This is one of those situations where, as a reader, you don’t know whether to cheer because we have (presumably) erudite headline writers, or boo for their lowering a great work of world literature for the purpose of a bad pun. But if only one reader buys the book and reads it because of this blog post, it will have put a small weight on the side of literature.
Er, the cat on the cover is presumably Behemoth, who’s a fairly important character in the book.
You’re right. But I meant that from the title and the cover art, a reader unfamiliar with the book might think that it’s about a cat named Margarita and its owner.