Review of
The Classics Reclassified,
by Richard Armour
Three out of five stars
If you appreciate the classics, you may not like this
book
As someone that has read many of the classics,
including five of the seven mentioned here, I appreciate the role they have
played in the human literary experience. Therefore, there were many times when
I found the spoof-like jokes disconcerting.
The seven classics
modified and occasionally mangled in this book are: The Iliad, Julius Caesar,
Ivanhoe, The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, Silas Marner and David Copperfield. While
some of the wordplay is humorous, for example there is the “question:” “In
Shakespeare’s plays have you noticed how soothsayers always say the sooth, the
whole sooth and nothing but the sooth?” Others are nonsensical: “Would Brutus
have been quite so casual about seeing the ghost of Caesar if he had read ‘Hamlet’
and ‘Macbeth?’”
I will concede
that spoofing classic literature is a hard task. What is done here reaches only
to the lowest rungs of that particular ladder.
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