FREE: The Five-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics - Greg Nagan

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From the author of A Prairie Home Companion's beloved "Five-Minute Classics" comes The Five-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics, a witty and profane lampoon of the Western literary canon -- the Spinal Tap of literature. "I will never write such wordy trash again," Leo Tolstoy said of War and Peace after reading Homer in the original Greek. Tolstoy's pledge inspired humorist Greg Nagan to whet his double-edged verbal sword and offer this gleefully twisted take on what contemporary readings of the Great Books say about our society today. From The Iliad to On the Road, these fifteen parodies provide a riotous romp through Western civilization (one version of it, anyway) from Homer to Kerouac, from Ancient Greece to Postwar America, from the Lyrical Epic to the Breathless Gush. Nagan's mirthful mayhem will delight those who've read the Great Books, and those who haven't read them will find these literary caricatures entertaining in their own right.

ISBN-10 0684867672
ISBN-13 9780684867670
Number Of Pages 224 pages
Publication Date 2000-08-28

ContentsAuthor's Introduction: Why Read the Great Books?The Five-Minute History of Western CivThe Iliadby HomerThe Divine Comedy:Part I,Infernoby Dante AlighieriParadise Lostby John MiltonSense and Sensibilityby Jane AustenA Christmas Carolby Charles DickensMoby-Dickby Herman MelvilleCrime and Punishmentby Fyodor DostoyevskyThe Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar WildeDraculaby Bram StokerThe Metamorphosisby Franz KafkaUlyssesby James Joyce1984by George OrwellThe Catcher in the Ryeby J. D. SalingerThe Old Man and the Seaby Ernest HemingwayOn the Roadby Jack KerouacAcknowledgments