Letters to the Editor
-
A la Recherche du Monty Python
Reminds me of a Monty Python skit I saw years ago about people trying to summarize Proust's masterpiece "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" in fifteen seconds or less.
It was hilarious; one was a chorus trying to sing their summarization and with all their attempts at harmony, they never even got to the first word.
-
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Carry a towell when you hitchhike.
Or
You have to know the question.
-
Six Degrees of Integration
Tell it like it is, please. Reduce me, just don't seduce me. If this thing works, we win. Western civilization is literature plus redactductibility. Out of Africa, into White House. It loses ourselves, it finds market. Makes no sense, sufferance, sudden relevance.
Of all the games to play with lit., "headlining" sums up our mutual and irreversible predicament: It's all just opinion now.
But moderated neurotically by cultural bias, personal choice, nouveau novelty a la pop iconography, Salon filter or others', economic experience, instinctive prejudice and knowledge-based lies, distortions and ultimately, discrimination - we live.
Socrates was shit. Plato rebelled a bit in "The Republic." In the entertainment franchise that is western cibibleization, right meets wrong, not democracy or literary expression. Reduce it to instant code, pollywogs. It's fun to rant, Kant.
-
Jane Eyre in six words
For Jane Eyre:
Governess weds brooding, rich, bigamist employer.
-
How about these
Student kills woman, gives himself up.*
Crime and Punishment
Nasty father murdered. Wrong son accused.
The Brothers Karamazov
Ex-Patriots drink wine and watch bullfights.
The Sun Also Rises
*this one modified from an old National Lampoon bit called something like "Great works of literature as told by today's teens." The entry for C and P actually went: "A guy kills this old lady. Then he gives himself up." It's a little more than six words, but you can't beat that one.
-
The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid,
Warrior sulks; friends die; enemy dies.
Sailor defies Poseidon, returns home alive.
Soldier defies Juno, founds Roman race.
-
6 words?
The saddest story I've ever heard.
The Good Soldier
Wow. That was a gimme.
-
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The artist is enamored of himself.
(Hope I didn't spoil it for anyone.)
-
Lolita
European pedophile seduces girl, ridicules America.
-
....
Judgmental Jew jokes and jerks off. Portnoy's Complaint
Miserable gardener ploughs miserable housewife miserably. Lady Chatterley's Lover
-
Moby-Dick
Big whale, crazy captain. Narrator survives.
-
Anna Karenina
Escapes bad marriage by getting trained.
-
I would rather blind my eyes
Moby Dick
-
The Sound and The Fury
After confusion,good family falls apart.
-
Ulysses
A long day's journey into thought.
-
Gone With The Wind
Unrequited love through war and peace.
-
War and Peace
Everybody dies or falls in love.
-
War and Peace
Napoleon invades. Kutuzov resists. Moscow burns.
-
some more...
1984 - Boot stomping on human face forever
Don Quixote - Foolish man wanders countryside. Subplots ensue.
The Power Broker - Enlightened elitism becomes racism. City screwed.
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Bridge blown up. Hero dies anyway.
-
some more
Babbit - 1920s version of George W. Bush
Gravity's Rainbow - Proverbs for paranoids : sex attracts rockets.
-
Pride and Prejudice
I saw that someone posted an amusing recap of Jane Austen, but I can't resist posting one for Pride and Prejudice because I'm reading it now:
Poor communication about who loves whom.
-
The Beast in the Jungle - Henry James
Boy meets girl, doesn't know it.