Review of "The Classics Reclassified," by Richard Armour

 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.