His roots planted in the regional culture of Western Moldavia, which became his main source of literary inspiration, Păstorel was at once an opinionated columnist, famous wine-drinking bohemian, and decorated war hero.

After an unsuccessful but scandalous debut in drama, Teodoreanu perfected his work as a satirist, producing material which targeted the historian-politician Nicolae Iorga and the literary scholar Giorge Pascu, as well as food criticism which veered into fantasy literature.

In the 1930s, inspired by his readings from Anatole France and François Rabelais, he also published his celebrated "Jester Harrow" stories, mocking the conventions of historical novels and Renaissance literature.

From 1947, Păstorel was marginalized and closely supervised by the communist regime, making efforts to adapt his style and politics, then being driven into an ambiguous relationship with the Securitate secret police.

[4] Osvald's father, Alexandru T. Teodoreanu, had previously served as City Mayor,[7] while an engineer uncle, also named Laurențiu, was the first manager of the original Iași Power Plant.

[37] At Iași, the Teodoreanus, including Ștefana,[26] tightened their links with Viața Românească, and with novelist Mihail Sadoveanu; Păstorel greatly admired the group's doyen, critic Garabet Ibrăileanu.

[38] A visitor, modernist poet-critic Felix Aderca, reported seeing Păstorel at Viața Românească, "plotting" against the National Theater Bucharest, because, unlike the nationalist theatrical companies of Iași, it only rarely staged Romanian plays.

[13] Bibliographers list the one-act comedy V-a venit numirea ("Your Appointment Has Been Received"), written in 1922, as Teodoreanu's only solo work as a playwright;[40] he is known to have published another "sketch drama", eponymnously known as Margareta Popescu.

"[43] Teodoreanu was also involved in the cultural and political quarrels of postwar Greater Romania, taking the side of newcomers from Transylvania, who criticized the country's antiquated social system; they proposed an "Integral nationalism".

[56] The event brought Păstorel into collision with the modernists: at Cuvântul, theatrical reviewer Ion Călugăru ridiculed Rodia de aur as a backward, "childish", play.

[59] Păstorel returned to food criticism, with chronicles published in Lumea, a magazine directed by literary historian George Călinescu, in Bilete de Papagal, and in the left-wing review Facla.

Osvald is said to have toured the Iași bookstores on the day Strofe came out, purchasing all copies because they could reach the voters;[66][67] another version, favored by poet Ion Larian Postolache, is that the public itself made sure to buy it as soon as the shops opened, thus preventing the authorities from confiscating it.

[69] More officially, Teodoreanu published two sketch story volumes: in 1931, Mici satisfacții ("Small Satisfactions") with Cartea Românească; in 1933, with Editura Națională Ciornei—Rosidor, Un porc de câine ("A Swine of a Dog").

Active for a while within the PNA's Iași section (which only had some ten members in all), but ridiculed its chairman Florin Sion, asking his party colleagues Sadoveanu and Ion Petrovici to take over; he eventually lost interest and quit the group.

Published with Editura Națională Ciornei, it carries the title Tămâie și otravă ("Frankincense and Poison"), and notably includes Teodoreanu's thoughts on social and cultural policies.

The other members and guests were literary, artistic and musical celebrities: Arghezi, D. Botez, Cezar Petrescu, Sadoveanu, Cella Delavrancea, George Enescu, Panait Istrati, Milița Petrașcu, Ion Pillat and Nicolae Tonitza.

[89] His commanding officer, Corneliu Obogeanu, found him to be useless, and ordered him to stay behind in Roman (a town which Teodoreanu described as unhygienic and "not at all attractive");[90] though not in active service, he put on hold his regular food chronicles.

Returning to dine at Capșa with friends such as Henri Wald, Paul Georgescu, Mihail Petroveanu and Zaharia Stancu, Păstorel expressed his conviction that Sovietization was irreversible: nu le arde americanilor țara noastră, nici nu știu măcar unde suntem pe hartă ("the Americans couldn't care less about our country, they can't even locate us on a map"); Wald recalled the moment as one of comedic perfection since, just moments after, a US Army officer in a "superb uniform" entered the room, glanced around as if looking for someone, and left.

[13] As noted by researcher Florina Pîrjol: "the scion of bourgeois intellectuals, with his liberal values and his aristocratic spirit, unsuitable for political 'taming', Al. O. Teodoreanu had a rude awakening into a world where, perceived as a hostile element, he was unable to exercise his profession".

[123] With Călinescu, Teodoreanu worked on La Roumanie Nouvelle, the French-language communist paper, where he had the column Goutons voir si le vin est bon ("Let's Taste the Wine and See if It's Good").

Written for Romanian diaspora readers, just shortly after the peak of food restrictions, these claimed that luxury items (Emmental, liverwurst, Nescafé, Sibiu sausages) had been made available in every neighborhood shop.

Writer Vintilă Russu-Șirianu, whose son was part of the hospital team, reports that Teodoreanu "always made efforts to ease things for his doctors", humoring them with his quatrains even moments after undergoing a bronchoscopy.

[156] In addition, literary historian Eugen Lovinescu believes, Teodoreanu was naturally linked to the common source of all modern parodies, namely the fantasy stories of François Rabelais.

[159] Although the presence of anachronisms makes it hard to even locate the stories' time-frame, they seem to be generally referencing the 18th- and 19th-century Phanariote era, during which Romanians adopted a decadent, essentially anti-heroic, lifestyle.

In Neobositulŭ Kostakelŭ, a "found manuscript", he has three narrative voices: that of the writer, Pantele; that of the skeptic reviewer, Balaban; and that of the concerned "philologist", with his absurd critical apparatus (a parody of scientific conventions).

[185] Hrimiuc then notes that Teodoreanu is entirely himself in the sketch S-au supărat profesorii ("The Professors Are Upset"), fictionalizing the birth of the National Liberal Party-Brătianu with "mock dramaticism", and in fact poking fun at the vague political ambitions of Moldavian academics.

Attributable to Teodoreanu, they are signed with various irreverent pen names, all of them referencing Iorga's various activities and opinions: Iorgu Arghiropol-Buzatu, Hidalgo Bărbulescu, Mița Cursista, Nicu Modestie, Mic dela Pirandola.

La Kremlin s-a dat semnalul Și-am văzut c-așa stă treaba Ani de zile, genialul L-am pupat în fund degeaba!

[224] Prefacing the former, D. I. Suchianu noted with pessimism that "those who understood [Teodoreanu] are all pretty much dead"; at the time, Păstorel's political works were still not publishable, and a full corpus of writings was therefore impossible.

[13] His anti-communist apocrypha have been featured in a topical volume, edited by Gheorghe Zarafu and Victor Frunză in 1996, but remain excluded from the standard Teodoreanu collections (including one published by Rodica Pandele at Humanitas).