Game : Rewrite the World's Greatest Literature

Cafe Society
1

This could really have gone in MPSIMS, but since it’s more “literary” I decided to try it here. I was at the market today and they had a rach of illustrated classic literature for kids. I just flipped open one and was pretty alarmed at how they had rewritten it. It was Moby Dick which, is memory serves, begins like this :

This was rewritten for kids as :

Talk about dumbing down. No wonder our kids relate better to video games.

So, here’s the drill. Take a well-known beginning of a novel and dumb it down as ludicrously as possible for us. If you can, provide a snippet of the original text for us uncultured boobs.

2

A Tale Of Two Cities:

Things weren’t all that bad, but they weren’t anything to write home about, either.

3

I’d just like to point out, Uncle Beer, that I’m the only guy who so far sucked up and posted yo your…
You’re Eutychus?

Dammit.

4

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

“Would you mind terribly driving the rest of the way to Las Vegas? I’m a tad tipsy.”

5

Yo, I’m Richard III. My back’s fucked up, so I can’t get no poontang, and I’m gonna make the world pay!

6

See Lolita. See Humbert. Humbert likes Lolita.

7

I always liked the reinterpretation of “Hamlet” on Animaniacs.

8

The Great Gatsby

could easily be

I do remember reading a comic-book style version of The House of the Seven Gables on all of an afternoon when I was nine years old. Having never read any other version, I can only say that it must be a brief, terribly exciting and dramatic book.

9

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us–that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion–that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

to:

75 years ago our forefathers made America. Now we fight over it in a civil war, and the best fight was right here. We turned it into a burial ground, but the buried already made this ground hallow. So let us toast us the living instead, who will try to make America live forever."

10

"Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

"Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s
done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

"Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

“The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead.”

Reader’s Digest version for children:

“Marley died.”

11

Hi! My name’s Philip Pirrup, but everyone just calls me Pip. Hi again!

From Great Expectations;

“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”

12

John 14 (King James Version)

ORIGINAL

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.

NEW

Don’t worry, I got your back.

13

“Dude, I’m, like, bummed.”

14

‘THERE was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed.’

To…

‘It was too cold to walk, which is good because I hate walking in the cold, and besides, my cousins are always picking on me.’

15

I can’t remember who it was, but one of my friends once summed up the whole of Genesis with “Oops.”

http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute has condensations of classic books, sci-fi and fantasy novels, and children’s books. My favorite so far has been Hamlet:

Hamlet

Whine whine whine…To be or not to be…I’m dead.

THE END

16

There was a line of “rewritten” Shakespeare plays I saw once – ral text on the left page, “dumbed down” version on the right. I briefly considered buying it, until I got to the famous line is Hamlet:
“Angels and Ministers of Grace Defend Us!”

This was “translated” as:
“Help”

I put the book down and walked away.

17

Read this in a White Dwarf magazine many years ago :

“Perhaps you are right, Frodo” said Gandalf. “These matters are too weighty for the small folk of the Shire. Give me the ring.”

18

Waiting for Godot:

Wasssssaaaappp!!!

19

Now I have this immense desire to see Waiting for Godot, as performed by Beavis and Butthead. Thanks a lot, Shalmanese.
Uhh… how about from Pride and Prejudice:

*It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.*

Everyone knows that if a guy has the money and the power he wants the women.

20

John 1

  1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
  2. The same was in the beginning with God.
  3. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
  4. In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
  5. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
  6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
  7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
  8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
  9. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
  10. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
  11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
  12. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
  13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
  14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
  15. John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
  16. And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
  17. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
  18. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.

To…

God had something to say. Creating the Universe didn’t say it all; nor did sending Moses so after sending John to give the intro, God said it all in Jesus.

Btw- Capacitor- the summary of the Gettysburg Address is actually pretty good in itself.