According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
We've been feeling kind of retarded lately (no offense), so we thought we'd check out our favorite book about retards (no offense), Flowers For Algernon.
The book is about Charlie Gordon, a mentally challenged thirty something living in New York. Like there aren't enough books about these guys already.
So, since he's not that bright, Charlie is pretty oblivious to how miserable life in New York really is. He has a crummy job as a janitor, his coworkers are mean, and since he's dumb, he can't even enjoy the New York Times crossword.
Well, his teacher Alice sees him as totally ambitious, so she enrolls him in an experiment that will make him smart. The Algernon in the story is a mouse that completed the same experiment before Charlie. Do you get it? Charlie is being used as a lab mouse.
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According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
Candide by Voltaire is one of the quintessential books of the Enlightenment. What does that mean? If you said, “it’s boring” you’d be a smart-ass, but not exactly wrong.
The plot of Candide might be boring, but the philosophy is kind of interesting.
So basically, there’s this guy Candide and his tutor Pangloss. Pangloss is an optimist, and he teaches Candide that this is “the best of all possible worlds.”
What does Pangloss mean by that? Well, this world was created by God (duh), God is perfect (duh), so obviously the world he created is the best possible one. Everything, from the subway you just missed to the dog shit you stepped in, is part of God's larger design. After all, why would God plan for anything else?
Of course, this philosophy can lead to some complacency. For example, if this is the best of all possible worlds, then this is the best of all possible blog posts.
According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
Last week, we brought you Franny, and reminded everyone that "Franny" and "Zooey" are really two separate stories. “Zooey” is set a little after "Franny." Both can stand alone, but like shampoo and conditioner, they work better together.
So contrary to that episode of Sex & The City when Carrie dates an impotent writer who has sisters named Franny and Zooey, Zooey is a boy. For our moeny, if you’re going to pretentiously name your child after a Salinger character, Zooey short for Zachary is the way to go. It's less obvious than Holden and a lot less lame.
The story starts with an introduction by Buddy Glass, its fictional author. But let’s not get all post-modern about what that means and skip to the action.
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According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
We went through our J.D. Salinger phase sometime around the end of middle school. In seventh grade, we hated phoniness because, much like breasts, we hadn’t developed our own yet. Now we’re B-cups and self-hating fakes, but that doesn’t make us love J.D. Salinger any less.
Today, "Franny" and "Zooey" are packaged together, but originally they ran as two separate stories in the New Yorker. Franny and Zooey are both members of the Glass family. Did you see The Royal Tenenbaums? The Tenenbaum kids are a lot like the Glass kids: super high achieving in youth, and completely screwed up because of it as adults.
Franny is the youngest Glass child. She goes to a good women’s college and she’s meeting her boyfriend, Lane, for a football weekend. Rah rah, right? Not so much. She gets off the train, and starts making fun of all the other girls visiting their boyfriends for fitting the stereotypes of their respective colleges. Apparently, the stereotype of the self-hating college student hadn’t been invented yet.
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According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
We’re going to keep it real right here and say we never liked King Lear. It’s often grouped with Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, but even when we’re choosing books to seem smart on the subway, we skip this one.
But with Gandalf aka Ian McKellen starring in the new adaptation, the chances of actually having an awkward moment at a dinner party were up, so we thought we’d look back on King Lear.
Let’s start off with the facts. King Lear is an asshole. In the beginning of the play, he asks his daughters, Goneril, Regan and Cordelia to tell him how much they love him in order to inherit his land. Debating the merit of such a question was beneath our college Shakespeare professor, but to us, it seems like kind of a dick move.
Goneril and Regan, the evil older sisters, tell their dad what he wants to hear; Cordelia, his favorite daughter is basically like, I’m your daughter, I’m not going to go on about how much I love you.
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According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
Happy New Year! As some of you may know, today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
Hey, who are we kidding? Everyone who works in media is Jewish. Shana Tova!
So in preparation for the next ten days of self-reflection, we thought we’d bring you the ultimate novel of Jewish repentance, Portnoy’s Complaint.
Before Philip Roth won a gazillion awards and became “the writer of our generation” or whatever, he was basically known as a sex freak. And this book is why.
Portnoy’s Complaint is a long meditation from Alex Portnoy to his psychoanalyst, who like most shrinks, doesn’t say anything.
The long of the short of it is that Alex is horny, Jewish and sexually frustrated.
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According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
With Fashion Week upon us, we thought it was a good time to look back on that 11th grade English favorite, The Great Gatsby.
Nick Carraway is narrator of The Great Gatsby and he’s a lot like Brandon Walsh in the first season of 90210. Like Brandon, Nick is a stock good guy character from Minnesota who is intrigued by the loose lifestyle of the coast. In Nick’s case, it’s the East coast, specifically West Egg, Long Island. West Egg has the hot parties, but the snobs from East Egg think it’s nouveau riche.
Continuing the 90210 theme, Nick quickly meets his Dylan, Jay Gatsby. Like Dylan, Gatsby is charming and mysterious. Just as Dylan had his Brenda, Gatsby has his Daisy, who is incidentally related to Nick. The two don’t have the twin connection, but Daisy is Nick’s cousin, and his only friend when he moves to New York.
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According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.
So there’s this guy, Meursault. His mom just died, but he’s not too concerned: “Mother died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”
In case you couldn’t tell, that’s kind of a strange reaction. The death of a parent, kind of a big deal. He goes to his mom’s funeral, and all he can think about is the heat, which again, is kind of weird.
When Meursault comes back from the funeral, he hangs out with this girl Marie. Even though this book was written in the 1940s, it’s still pretty socially relevant. Their relationship is exactly like the one your best friend bitches about nonstop. They have good sex, she loves him but he’s like whatev. But unlike your best friend’s fuck buddy, he’s pretty upfront. When she asks him if he loves her, he says, “I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so.” Ouch, the truth hurts. Later Marie asks if Meursault wants to get marry, and he’s like, eh, but goes along with it anyway because Marie wants to.
