When he was asked to write a short piece about his writing life, Colum McCann first submitted a text in the guise of a letter. This experience made him want to continue: other letters followed over the course of a year. The idea of a book on the pattern of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet began to form in his mind. This is how, in 2017, McCann published his Letters to a Young Writer, a book-length text, the title of which conspicuously displays its source of inspiration. Both texts have a lot in common, as their authors are united by similar motives. Nevertheless, a certain number of divergences can also be observed, as McCann’s universe is very different from Rilke’s. The distortion of a text by means of transformation is perceived as a form of parody: how and why did McCann choose to copy his master so conspicuously and, at the same time, to write a text which distances itself from the original one? These are the main issues raised here.