BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!

Subject: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 09:04 PM

If I'd had this aid when I was studying for a BA in English, lit!

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 09:26 PM

I'm particularly struck by the synopsis of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow:

"A screaming thing comes across the sky. It's a V-2 rocket carrying twelve thousand pounds of symbolism, and it's coming down on your poor, deluded, postmodern head."

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: catspaw49
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 09:28 PM

That's hilarious....Great site!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Mooh
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 09:43 PM

I laughed until I stopped, just now.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: wysiwyg
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 09:44 PM

Mooh, you are a stitch!

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: bobad
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 09:56 PM

Yeah I know what you mean Rap, I had to slog through Cole's notes and Classic Comics.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: leeneia
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 10:15 PM

Reading the titles, it strikes me how many of them are depressing, morbid or tragic. Is this the way to get people to read?

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Amos
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 10:32 PM

Lots of work goes into minimizing all literature into nothing. Cool website.

A

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: katlaughing
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 10:53 PM

We had a thread, a long time ago, in which we wrote 1-2 line synopses of many classics. Anyone remember the name of it. It was a lot of fun, but i can't for the life of me remember which one it was!

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 11:00 PM

These pithy summaries put me in mind of the late Richard Armour who wrote many a book with parody synopses of classic literature, English and American. He also wrote a humorous history of the United States, "It all Started with Columbus" and several other "It All Started with..." books. And with all that, he was a respected professor of English at the Claremont Colleges near Los Angeles on the sunset coast.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Bee
Date: 14 Dec 06 - 11:13 PM

"Depressing, morbid or tragic" kinda describes a lot of folk songs as well. People love a good tragedy.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: JennieG
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 12:35 AM

And opera too........"depressing, morbid or tragic" sums up the plots of nearly all operas......

Cheers
JennieG......who doesn't mind opera really.......even if it doesn't have a happy ending!

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 02:10 AM

The only trouble is, you have to have read the book to understand why the synopsis is so funny.

It would be fun to have a thread where people make up some alternate synopses, or original summaries of other books.

Elmer

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 02:48 AM

Dictionary...Every word you could ever think of is defined here....
That was a great help.

Love the site and what a laugh..Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 03:19 AM

I remember when New Yorker Magazine summarized "Love Story" as, "She dies, he cries."

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 07:40 AM

Not enough detail in my story ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 09:25 AM

I still have a bunch of Richard Armour: The Classics Reclassified, American Lit Relit -- if you have never read them, do so. If your library doesn't have them they can get them on Interlibrary Loan. His histories, too, are belly-laugh-provoking. His last book (that I'm aware of) was "The Happy Bookers" -- a history of librarianship, a field into which his son, Geoff, went. Richard Armour was also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves, a poet of light verse -- a brilliant man.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 09:46 AM

It's said that the Readers' Digest Condensed Book Club once condensed a Hemingway novel to:

             "BANG!"

They never said which novel it was, but some might say that could be condensed to: "ANY"

John

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: GUEST,EBarnacle
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 06:15 PM

Moby Dick: Whaling was dangerous.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 06:53 PM

Somewhat clever, but not THAT clever.

For instance, in the SF/F link, they get really lame and sound far too "English major" stuck up and snotty.

Like "Slaughterhouse Five" is beneath them.

OK.

And if they can do novels/books in a minute, they should DEFINITELY be able to do a movie in 30 seconds max.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 06:57 PM

Actually, make that "underemployed English major working at Borders".

Perhaps they are the jerks responsible for making Cormac McCarthy what he is today.

Annoying as all fuck.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: GUEST
Date: 15 Dec 06 - 08:56 PM

..and I read a lot of these books on my own time when I could've been getting college credit for it. Damn.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 12:12 PM

Katlaughing: maybe this is the thread you had in mind:

BS: Short works

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: RangerSteve
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 12:37 PM

Hamlet: Everyone who isn't dead in the beginning, will be at the end.

Most of Dickens: The first five hundred chapters drag a bit. Then there's a really memorable and foul villand, last 200 chapters are a real pot-boiler, everyone gets what they deserve, due mostly to the wackiest coincedences you could possibly think up, but don't give them too much thought or it'll all seem like crap.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Charley Noble
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 01:41 PM

I donna know. The WAR AND PEACE abstract is rather long.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 08:03 PM

Cute idea, but the pages "stick" and something at the top isn't displaying properly. I think I'm missing about 25% of the condensation. Condensed condensation, so to speak.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: kendall
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 09:26 PM

I've found very few of the classics not worth reading.
For instance, Moby Dick is one of my favorite books. Based on a true story of the whaling ship ESSEX that was rammed and sunk by a big sperm whale.

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 10:28 PM

If you can't laugh about what you love, I don't think you love it very much.

Take music, for instance -- Victor Borge, PDQ Bach, and others -- you've gotta KNOW the subject to make people laugh about it. And if you don't love it, why'd you spend so much time on it?

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 11:14 PM

Jim, thanks, that's one of them. The one I had in mind, though, was from farther back and had more postings. I think it was one of those famous "thread drifts" so the thread title doesn't indicate what it became.:-)

Subject: RE: BS: If Only I'd Had This In College!!
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 11:19 PM

Good point, Mike. As an English major, I get a lot of enjoyment out of parodies (think of the Edward Bulwer-Lytton awards, etc.). And as someone who grew up steeped in music, the humor I find there is almost magical. (Anyone else remember hearing the Hoffnung Concerts many years ago? You can hardly hear the recordings sometimes for the audience laughter).

I'm glad to see Kendall speak up for Moby Dick. That's a favorite of mine also, and I think "The Whale" section is well worth reading, despite the silly advice one sometimes hears to "skip it."

SRS