Readings, Rated
An awful idea. A wonderful, awful idea.
CliffsNotes is soo twentieth century, and the young literati, especially its upstarts, know it. Two University of Chicago freshmen have just signed a book deal with Penguin to translate 75 classic literary works as “Twitterature,” reports the Chicago Tribune. Alex Aciman and Emmett Rensin, both 19, are rewriting classics by Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Dante and other greats in 20 or fewer 140-character tweets.
“Imagine if Achilles had a Twitter account and an iPhone, and he was telling his story in real time,” Aciman said. “That’s what this book is going to be like.”
Rensin added, “It’s like [CliffsNotes], but funnier—it reflects the narcissistic nature of Twitter.”
Awh, he said “narcissistic,” how cute. Don’t mind me, I’m just jealous; it’s hilarious, and it actually sounds like an incredibly fun project, combining synopsis and fresh interpretation with aspects of translation, full of possibilities for prose-poem-esque brilliance. Will Twitterature dominate literature? I think not. It would be a great gift to give someone 75 books all in one, but only once.
Speaking of the tweeting world, Literago is launching Twiterago (by the way, we totally came up with that before Twitterature! And ours only has one ‘t’ in the middle–classier, eh?) to keep you up to date on as many lit events as we can twit. Look for Twiterago on, well, you know where.
Okay, I bit…when, exactly, does Twiterago launch?
I’d actually heard this idea before… it was just a matter of who got there first.
kalamazoo payday loans no fax…
Very usefull. Thanks! kalamazoo+payday+loans+no+fax…