Mary, Princess of the Suburbs

Introduction. Cantos I — VI.

Introduction

The suburban epic, Mary, Queen of the Suburbs or Mary, Princess of the Suburbs (for the work is well known under both titles), is, without a doubt, the most important “hero” text in the canon of midcentury modern suburban devotional literature. The fact that it is rarely studied or read should not dissuade serious students from undertaking a thorough investigation of it, for anyone who makes it to the end is, by definition, a “scholar” of it, and can therefore reasonably call themselves a “world renowned scholar” of the work.

The following translation is an amalgam of many sources, and for it we have relied heavily on the work of Professor Judith Tinsdale’s previous work on the Princeton Bits, an almost complete copy of the non-poem found in a New Rochelle Home on a set of forgotten floppy disks in 1992. While the most complete copy of the Mary Cycle found to date, the Princeton Bits most likely contain a number of late-millennium priestly additions, notably the oft-mentioned “reverse similes” where a object in the natural world is compared to a man-made object (i.e. “clouds like factory smoke” or “sepia light”). In addition to the smilies, the Princeton Bits are also thought to have a large number of additions and subtractions intended to reduce the level of homophobia in…