Okay, I actually like Moby-Dick in all it’s unwieldy glory, including all the nautical and cetological stuff. So I’d hate to be the editor at Orion Books who’s charged with chopping Melville’s whale of a tale into fishsticks. I couldn’t be ruthless enough to trim that or any of the other literary heavyweights (including Anna Karenina and David Copperfield) into the 40-percent-slimmer editions that Orion is releasing this month. But I did enjoy the New York Times article the other day that solicited the opinions of several well-known authors as to which books could stand to be shorter.
Norman Mailer was unsentimental enough to list three of his own tree-flattening tomes on his should-be-shorter list. EW essayist Stephen King went so far as to write his own hilariously abridged versions of Gone With the Wind, pared down to just four sentences, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which he distilled down to a single tabloid headline. My favorite response, however, came from Jonathan Franzen, who noted that downsized books should have similarly diminished titles, like The Pretty Good Gatsby and Shortmarch. (I guess Franzen’s own magnum opus would become The Correction.)
This article could inspire several questions/party games for us, PopWatchers. Such as: which novels do you think could be slashed? On the other hand, which do you wish were longer? (I vote to fatten up Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.) And finally, what Franzenesque titles would you give these fragmented fictions? I thought of several: Bleak Condominium, A Tale of One City, House of the Six Gables, Naked Snack, Ninety-Seven Years of Solitude, and of course, Finite Jest. Your turn…
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The Fingernail of Darkness
Oh, let’s not forget long poems too. T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land could become The Dump. Confusing as it it, that’s not a piece I’d want to cut up.
Now you’ve got me started:
The Noise and the Agitated
The Serf of Ocean Park
The Known Village
The Seconds
As far as trimming books, I thought Orwell did the best job with his own work. Animal Farm communicated his point better than 1984.
I can’t. Just can’t. Abridging is an abomination.
If there’s a series that could stand to be shorter, I’d nominate Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. 12 big books is quite an undertaking, and although I love the series, a couple of the books have been sub-par.
Reduced titles:
The Butcher of Monte Cristo
The Custodian of the Rings
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Kidney Stone
A Thousand Little Pieces
Slaughterhouse 37
The Red Badge of Willingness
The Taming of the Mouse
I guess I should stop now.
I love George Eliot, but I could do without most of the first half of The Mill on the Floss.
I disagree Jael. Although Animal Farm is a decent novel, Orwell’s 1984 blows that one WAY out the water.
I think some snipping would make BLEAKHOUSE just a little less Bleak.
Walden Puddle
How about War and Mission Accomplished?
If Dickens came out with “Reasonable Expectations”, I might read it.
Anything by Charles Dickens. the man was paid by the word, which is why most of his novels are over-sized and over-rated.
Jael: it’s funny you should mention Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” In its original version–before Eliot amended it under advice from Ezra Pound–it was about twice as long and, by all accounts, half as good. So sometimes it’s a good idea to bring out the scissors.
I like Steinbeckenheimer’s version of the “Rapes of Grath.” Grath being a poor town located several miles from the Yugoslavian border where the rapes had occurred. I think this novel should be fattened a bit. That’s just my opinion.
I agree with Lene, this is just wrong.
Miss Jean Brodie’s Best Week Ever
Word, G. Dickens was paid by the word and some fun plots and awesome characterization ends up swallowed in a zillion modifiers and turns of phrase.
On another note, Henry James. The man once took five pages to describe a character opening a door. Ever since, I have distrusted the deeply psychological narrative.
*The Next to the Last of the Mohicans
I think both The Corrections and Ulysses could be greatly improved through some ruthless yet judicious editing. (Yes, I’ve read Ulysses, but couldn’t make it all the way through The Corrections.)
But I feel the need to point out that no one’s forcing anyone to read any particular book. If a book is too long for you, don’t read it. On the other hand, if you really want to read Moby-Dick, man up and read the whole thing. Otherwise, what’s the point?
I can already predict that teachers are going to start using these shorter versions in classes, and our kids will just keep getting dumber.
Farenheit 450
Howl’s Moving Apartment (guess that’s not a massive novel, but it’s one of my favorite books and I just couldn’t resist!)
Standard Expectations
The Middle-Aged Man and the Pond (the battle to catch a somewhat large koi fish!!)
White Bicuspid
I agree about Dickens. I was about the only one in my honors English class back in high school who enjoyed Great Expectations, but I couldn’t get through A Tale of Two Cities to save my life.
On one hand, I think it abridging is just an easy way for people to say they read Moby Dick without reading it all. On the other hand, The Grapes of Wrath seemed like it would never end. I actually never finished it. I got about 4/5 of the way through and just couldn’t go on.
Seeing this I just had to post this link: http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute/
They have ultra condensed minute summaries of books ranging from Homer to Rowling that are hillarious. Here’s an example:
The Collected Works of Jane Austen
Female Lead
I secretly love Male Lead. He must never know.
Male Lead
I secretly love Female Lead. She must never know.
(They find out.)
THE END
I wish someone would have taken a knife to Anna Karenina years ago, before I had to read it for 12th grade English.
Especially the 40 pages in the middle about farming techniques…
The problem with Dickens and his contemporaries is we are forced to read them as a whole book- instead of as the serials they were written as. My 12th grade teacher had us read Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters as it was written in serial and it was AMAZING. I wish we had read Tale of 2 Cities that way.
I’d Shorten the Grapes of Wrath. 600 pages just to see the protagonist walk off stage left, grandpa die, and some spoiled brat do some breast feeding in a barn with a smile on her face? It still makes me mad that after reading through that piece of depressing garbage that the barn scene was supposed to be some sort of payoff.
I’d also re edit that piece of dribble known as the Scarlet Letter (how many five dollar words can one use in a single sentence? Just ask resident expert Hawthorne). Oliver Twist could also be cut in half.
I would love for Of Mice and Men and the Old Man N the Sea to be a good 20 pages longer, and wish that Ian Fleming’s James Bond Novels were twice as thick. His descriptions of meals and of 1950’s era hook ups are real enough to taste, touch and hear.
In a more modern context, My fave author Haruki Murakami’s got a few books that took wayyy too long to end so lamely. For example, Wind up Bird Chronicles could stand to lose 200 pages easy.
No Brand Woman,
I’d have to disagree with you on Farenheit 451. I wish it were longer. I would like to see how the literaries would rebuild society. I also liked the Jane Austen commnent. I’m an English teacher and believe me it’s no walk in the park trying to explain to seniors why it’s hilarious that Darcy and Elizabeth get their wires crossed.
Les Miserables could totally use a paring. Victor Hugo went on for a whole chapter about the Paris sewer system! It could easily lose several chapters w/o damaging the story in the least.
Lord Jim could use some serious paring down. Heart of Darkness and Conrad’s other shorts were such great reads. Then I had to read Lord Jim. I couldn’t finish it. To this day, it’s the only book I’ve never finished.
I read STephen King’s “Bag of Bones” last summer and if his editor had the b*lls to get him to cut 150 – 200 pages it would have been a GREAT novel. (ALso should’ve forced him to write MORE of the novel-within-the-novel). As it was it was bloated.
Condensed title: Doggy Bag of Bones
allison:
Well, I was really just making a joke (although, not a very god one) w/the title. I put The Old Man and the Sea on that list, but it was so short and beautiful so I would never cut it. Same thing with White Fang (love Jack London for some reason).
With that said, I have to say that I did not enjoy Farenheit 451. But then, I was in jr. high school at the time when it was required reading and even though I was in an honors English class, it still just went right over me. I’ve always been curious how I would comprehend it if I read it now as an adult.