Really, the title of this book says it all. One hundred classics, mostly but not all from the Western canon, mostly but not all works of prose fiction, distilled into the 5-7-5 structure and usually with a fair degree of irreverence; some of them stick fairly closely to just summarising the original (inasmuch as that's possible with an exercise of this sort), while others insert more explicit contemporary commentary. I started noticing it in bookstores a few months ago, and it has made me laugh plenty...I could never have justified buying the book for myself, but yesterday I picked it up as a gift for a friend and took the opportunity to read it from cover to cover while enjoying a drink in the window of Degraves.
For example:
"The Prince" - Niccolò Machiavelli
What I learned at court:
Being more feared than loved - good.
Getting poisoned - bad.
"Das Kapital" - Karl Marx
October winds blow.
Your contradictions doom you,
capitalist swine.
"Lolita" - Vladimir Nabokov
Lecherous linguist -
he lays low and is laid low
after laying Lo.
"The Metamorphosis" - Franz Kafka
'What have I become?'
Uncertain, Gregor Samsa
puts out some feelers.
"Portrait of a Lady" - Henry James
Will she inherit?
Which suitor will she marry?
When will tea be served?
And three that I like muchly even though I haven't read the books themselves:
"Waiting For Godot" - Samuel Beckett
Act I. 'It's hopeless.
My boots don't fit. Where is God?'
Act II. The same thing.
"The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" - Laurence Sterne
I've torn out line two.
Reader, it was dull.
"Fathers and Sons" - Ivan Turgenev
A nihilist dies
without having achieved much.
Mission accomplished.
