First, if you haven’t contributed to the new president’s nickname list, go hereand do so. I command you as your bloggy dictator.
In other news, ever wondered how to sum up masterpieces of fiction in a single sentence? Look no further than this London Telegraph’s article on the top 100 Books Everyone Should Read. I won’t even start on how I believe that the thundercunts who wrote this insipid and misleading article managed to use some kind of paper-rock-scissors methodology to select the tomes of what they believe pass as “readable” — I mean, Middlemarch is #1, and while I know it’s all literary and shit, it’s also about as much fun to get through as a bowl of soggy dicks. And don’t even get me started again on Moby Dick.
No, the real hilarity of this list is in the descriptions of these works. The writer just hopped into a rolling wagon of crazy and took the fuck off. They either are mesmerizing lies that portray the books as MUCH more interesting than actually written, or they manage to condense great novels into one-liners worthy of Jon Stewart. By the end of the thing, you are starting to wonder if you’re not reading an pornographic Anime film catalog with snippets of plot for descriptors. Here’s an idle sample; you tell me if it doesn’t sound like something that a schizophrenic 3rd grader would write for a book report:
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein : WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a “masterpiece”.
How funny is it that masterpiece is in quotes? Also: looking for jewellery? That’s the best possible description of that journey?!
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky : Boy meets pawnbroker. Boy kills pawnbroker with an axe. Guilt, breakdown, Siberia, redemption.
It’s like a fucked-up game of Balderdash, that last sentence.
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift : Swift’s scribulous satire on travellers’ tall tales (the Lilliputian Court is really George I’s).
Thanks for the heads-up. Whew. For a minute there, I couldn’t remember what the hell “satire” was…
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk: A painter is murdered in Istanbul in 1591. Unusually, we hear from the corpse.
Unusually.
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger: Expelled from a “phony” prep school, adolescent anti-hero goes through a difficult phase.
Difficult phase?! Seriously?! It’s not like he’s just got a messy case of bed-wetting.
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: Lily Bart craves luxury too much to marry for love. Scandal and sleeping pills ensue. In that order: Scandal THEN sleeping pills. They ensue… with hilarious results.
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: Picaresque tale about quinquagenarian gent on a skinny horse tilting at windmills.
Say that 5 times fast, motherfucker.
Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: Septimus’s suicide doesn’t spoil our heroine’s stream-of-consciousness party.
It’s her party, she’ll stream if she wants to.
Underworld by Don DeLillo: From baseball to nuclear waste, all late-20th-century American life is here.
All of it. Baseballs? Check. Nuclear Waste? Check. Well, DeLillo, my friend, I think we’re looking at a Modern American Masterpiece. Well played.
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald: A mysterious millionaire’s love for a woman with “a voice full of money” gets him in trouble.
*cue the snide remark* Wait… Actually, that about says it all.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: “Okies” set out from the Depression dustbowl seeking decent wages and dignity.
Again, why is “Okies” in quotes? Was the Jode family really from Arkansas, just maliciously masquerading as poor Oklahoma farmers to get the attention of douche-cake John Steinbeck? Probably. But you’ll have to read the book to find out!!!
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo: An ex-convict struggles to become a force for good, but it ends badly.“It ends badly.” Er, Yes. Yes it does.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera: A doctor’s infidelities distress his wife. But if life means nothing, it can’t matter.
That’s right. It really can’t. So just keep on truckin’.
A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell: Twelve-book saga whose most celebrated character wears “the wrong kind of overcoat”.
This just makes it sound like a 12-book Hell on Wheels; either that or this book is Anna Wintour’s bizarre idea of a good time.
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding: Thigh-thwacking yarn of a foundling boy sewing his wild oats before marrying the girl next door.Who honestly says “thigh thwacking?” I mean, ever.
Ulysses by James Joyce: Modernist masterpiece reworking of Homer with humour. Contains one of the longest “sentences” in English literature: 4,391 words.“Humour?” In Ulysses? Where?! In the fucking appendix?! Is there a secret chapter that I missed?! You have clearly never read this nightmare of a thing, sir. Either that, or you think that “humour” is wacky American slang for “suicidally boring.”
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë: Out on the winding, windy moors Cathy and Heathcliff become each other’s “souls”. Then he storms off. Aaaaand, he’s OUT. Book? Done.
The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Did the watch salesman kill the girl on the beach. If so, who heard?
I’m not here to play 20 questions, my good man. I’m here to read GREAT LITERATURE.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë: Poor and obscure and plain as she is, Mr Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally. Did we mention that it’s illegal? Oh, and that we just ruined the ending? Our work here is done, then.
And finally, an accurate portrayral: one sentence that perfectly captures the only redeeming quality of this unredeemable bore of a book:
Atonement by Ian McEwan: Puts the “c” word in the classic English country house novel.
Considering that I have always felt this book should be renamed, “Failure to Atone,” and then promptly edited down to the manageable size of a single chapter (the one including the cunt letter), I find this remarkably apt.
By all means, go and see for yourself the rest of the list. I mean, if you have the time and inclination to be patronized in the single-sentence format. And who doesn’t like that?
Thank you. This is my first visit to your blog, but I’m certain you will become a daily addiction. I am an English Lit teacher for my local high school. I’ve harbored a secret HATE for several of the novels on this list, but was too intimidated by academia to speak my mind. Your shameless honesty about the suck-age of these so-called classics has liberated me. I can no longer pretend that I understand the prestige awarded to Middlemarch or Moby Dick. When my fellow lit teachers speak reverently of these tomes in the future, I will no longer hesitate to shriek, “Seriously??!! Reading those texts makes me want to rip out my own eyeballs, douse them in gasoline and light them on fire!” Thank you again.
I would have probably would have been an English major if it wasn’t for this revolting list. Descriptions sound like bad Hollywood pitch meeting:Kings English meets Paramount Pictures
Is it wrong that I derived great humor from this woefully inadequate yet delightfully tacky list?
Can’t say I share the same derision toward some of the classics (despite my hatred of such novels, I actually loved Jane Eyre) but your commentary made me giggle. Thanks for the pick-me-up.
Oh my God. You are freakin’ hilarious! Well played, my friend. It’s been ages since I laughed out loud at a humor blog. Thanks, I needed that.
Awesome descriptions. And I can pretty much promise that 99% of these “greats” will go straight to my “do not read – EVER” list. Most of the remaining 1%, I had to read for class.
And, seriously, FUCK Ulysses.
The Sorrows of Young Werther?!? Are they serious? Werther’s such a monster. UGH.
guess I’m going through a ‘difficult phase’ cause I just totally peed my pants laughing.
@ Cari: Thanks so much! I hope you become a regular reader! Glad my shameless honesty has inspired you to wave a cheerful middle finger in the face of pretentious book snobbery.
@ Margo: Exactly! And the effect is ghastly!
@ MissAnthropy: Oh, I have a hearty respect for many classics — I wouldn’t have been much of a Literature MA without it. But I also think that too many books are canonized for the sake of other acadmic egos, and that irritates me. Glad I made you laugh! Please come back again soon!
@ HumorSmith: Thank you so much! Glad I could be of assistance. Please mosey on back any time!
@ Kathy: I would totally bury Werther in an ant-hill while soaked in honey.
@ JellyKean: That’s why I heart you.
When Werther killed himself, I couldn’t be happier. Well, I could – if it had happened earlier and therefore the book was shorter. Like a page. Luckily I was in a comp lit class about the art and artifice of love, and we all pretty much felt the same way. (Although every once in a blue moon, I’ll meet someone who likes/loves the book, and I’m like, “….Really?…We can’t be friends.”) You know there was like a whole cult of fans back when it was published, of kids who would dress like Werther and mope around (and sometimes even off themselves). I like to think of them as proto-emo.
I rather like Ulysses. Joyce is funnier than this guy, though perhaps unintentionally. That said, every literature lover needs to hate at least one famous literary work. Like Madame Bovary, which is so self-involved and boring it makes me suicidal. Atonement – I don’t even remember Atonement. Though I did read it. It better to hate things with a passion. Anyway, I had a coherent, witty comment, but I eated it.