Th' Gr't W'rks o' Fict'n; or, Long Stories Short

     Introducing Classics for Dummies 

for dummies -- 100 four-beat cheat sheets 

for the spare-time-challenged.

     Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird:

Hey, Boo. How do!

     Heller's Catch-22:

     Kerouac's On the Road:

     Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings:

     Nabokov's Lolita:

     Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye:

     Rushdie's Midnight's Children:

     Golding's Lord of the Flies:

     Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath:

     Orwell's 1984:

     Bronte's Jane Eyre: 

     Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway:

     Forster's A Passage to India:

     Huxley's Brave New World:

     Spark's the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie:

     Bunyon's The Pilgrim's Progress:

A race for grace.

     Lindsay's A Voyage to Arcturus:

Life's bane...? Just pain.

     Anon's A Thousand Nights and One Night

Ending pending.

     Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles:

Don't fuss: they're us.

     Virgil's The Aeneid:

New home...? Try Rome!

     Plato's The Republic: 

We're slaves in caves.

     Mankiewicz's Citizen Kane: 

The thread's his sled.

     Jones's From here to Eternity: 

Prewitt blew it.

     Eco's The Name of the Rose:

Who took that book...?

     Christie's And Then There Were None:

Niggers...? Figgers!

     Herge's Adventures of Tintin:

Her(r Proté)gé (Or, Short reporter)

  

     Anon's Gilgamesh: 

I'll die...? Oh, my!

     Milne's Winnie the Pooh:

No hon', no fun.

     Grahame's The Wind in the Willows:

Toad's cars leave scars.

 

     Aesop's Fables:

Me...? You...? A zoo!

     Milton's Paradise Lost:

The Fall 'n' all.

     Siddhartha's Tripitaka:

You da Buddha.

     The Torah: 
He chooses Jews.

     The Gospels: 
A Jew, though new.

     Homer's Iliad: 
The horse...? Of course.

 

     Tolstoy's War and Peace: 
One's hell...? Do tell!

     Homer's Odyssey: 
Don't roam! Head home!

     Augustine's Confessions:

Saved get...? Not yet.

     Anon's Beowulf:

Men fear fen's mere.

     Dante's The Inferno: 

Satan's waitin.'

 

     Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice: 
One pound ground round.

     Columbus's Diario:

We'd best head west.

     Shakespeare's Hamlet: 
To be...? Let's see...

     Machiavelli's The Prince: 

Id works, you jerks.

     Melville's Moby Dick: 
Big fish spares Ish.

     Twain's Huckleberry Finn: 
A raft...? They laugh'd.

     Thoreau's Walden:

This wood be good.

     Flaubert's Madame Bovary:

Ms. B...? She's me.

 

     Carroll's Alice in Wonderland: 

Rabbit...? Grab it!

     Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams:

Squish, squish...? I wish.

     Proust's In Search of Lost Time: 
Could be her tea.

 

     Joyce's Ulysses: 
Molly's follies.

     Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: 
More's less, I guess.

     Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl 

Fascist...? Trash ist.

     Achebe's Things Fall Apart:

The fun part's done. 

The Anti-hero of a Thousand Facelifts: a Ritmus in Rime

Anti-hero as Verso-Gilgamesh

Anti-hero as Non-Noah

Anti-hero as Opp-Odysseus

Anti-hero as Countra-Arthur

Anti-hero as Anti-Dante

Anti-hero as Con-Don Quixote

Hear Verso-Gilgamesh's cry...?

(This cuss...? No customary guy):

"What deeds to duly dare today...? 

Best beasts to best; first fiends to flay...? 

Perhaps one from 'Da Netherwoild'...

tho' chaps 'n' battle leather’s soil'd.” * 

(Is there one chance in hell he'd say, 

“Tomorrow is another day”...?) 

* Cf Gilgamesh, Part 6.

The forecast calls for major rain:
"...an atmospheric coup-de-main... 

a plu-sunami...” (end of quote). 
“D'ya think we'll need a bigger boat...?” * 
Non-Noah floats his brand-new plan. 
But deluge news o’erwhelms the man. 
He sighs, as skies turn grey from blue, 
“Might not my big umbrella do...?”  

* Anticipating Chief Brody in Jaws.

A hulk who sports a solo eye 

now irks this Herculean Guy. 

The giant scarfs Opp-Ody's friends. 

“it can't be well this saga ends. 

I’ll need a caber with a taper 

to finesse this crazy caper. 

Or, before the dude’s next chew, 

I’ll swipe his specs. That, too, could do.” 

This kin o' kings would be one, too,

so mulls what anti-heroes do 
to get their hands upon a crown: 
“Who'd buckle up best buckles down.” 
Then Counter-Arthur spots a stone 
from which a sword appears to’ve grown. 
“I might extract that from its bed...
or simply get a gat instead.”

An Anti-Dante Alighieri,

disembark'd off Charon's ferry,

tours some eight-plus rings of Hell:

"It's much like Russia's Kola Well." *

He claims he's searching for a girl,

one name o' Beatrice (or Pearl),

but in the end forsakes his spree:

"There's lots more fishes in the sea."

* The bottom of the Kola Superdeep Borehole

is still the deepest artificial point on Earth.

Some read of heroes’ deeds in books,  

of evils no true hero brooks.  

Contra-Don Quixote’s one.  

Romances...? Man, he’s read a ton.  

But Contra-Don takes things too far --  

until, that is, it’s time to spar:  

“Duress...? I guess I best say ‘Whoa!’  

Them giants might be windmills, no...?”  

Regarding the Attraction of Opposites, It's Touch 'n' Go: a Ritmus in Rime

With Eb 'n' Flo, to is fro, 
stop is go 'n' yes is no. 
Sis is bro, feu est l’eau, 
vrai est faux 'n' joy is woe.

With Eb 'n' Flo, pimp is ‘ho,’

suck is blow 'n' high is low.

Wane is grow, fox is crow,

rich is po' 'n' fade is glow.

With Eb 'n' Flo, am is pro, 
Jenny's Joe 'n' quid's pro quo.
Shemp is Moe, paid is owe,

sigma's rho 'n' catch is throw.

With Eb 'n' Flo, fast is slow,

shove is tow 'n' trot is "whoa."

Gross is beau, err is know,

win is show...and, yes: ebb's flow...

...plus (as is shown here)

less is mo.'