Now, there’s been a trend over the last couple of decades for publishers to really bulk out the titles of books, as if the Victorian era had come back into fashion. Remember when novels were called The Memoirs of Mr John Smith Esq: A Romance in Three Parts; or One Should Not Confuse a Goat, yeah? Remember the 1880s? So do I. Well, they’re back.
I have in my possession a copy of Cornelius Ryan’s 1974 book A Bridge Too Far, which is the classic tale of the doomed Arnhem operation. It’s called A Bridge Too Far, just that. Nowadays it would be called Arnhem: A Bridge Too Far: How The Allies Tried and Failed to Shorten the War by Several Months, and indeed the most recent reprint is called A Bridge Too Far: The Classic History of the Greatest Battle of World War II. At first there was just one colon, and the books were called POETIC TITLE: SHORT DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS, but now there are two colons, and the book is called ONE WORD: POETIC TITLE: SHORT DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS, and sometimes A NEW CLASSIC BY NAME OF AUTHOR, although that’s not part of the name. Fiction books are often NAME OF AUTHOR’S FRANCHISE: NAME OF NOVEL, you know. I often wonder if you could just stretch the name out forever, e.g. Tom Clancy Presents Tom Clancy’s Op-Centre: Book 16: A John Shadow Adventure: The End of Days: Book 4: Foxtrot and the Wild Goose: Jack Clark’s First Strike: Brainlash: The Ultimate Foe: The Two Doctors: Trial of a Time Lord: The One Where Peri Wears a Bikini: Colin Baker* and so on.
But, yeah, any more? But they have to seem organic, e.g. no obvious parodies (like Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which I think was a parody of Victorian fiction, because there was a fad for that kind of thing at that time, e.g. “Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite”, all those bands with names like The 1910 Fruitgum Corporation or The Strawberry Alarm Clock etc). A shufty on Amazon.com suggests that someone called Dick Morris is the master of this, although I can’t tell if he’s a joke or not. He writes books with names like Screwed!: How Foreign Countries Are Ripping America Off and Plundering Our Economy - and How Our Leaders Help Them Do It, which I assume is about how foreign countries are ripping America off and plundering their economy, and how their leaders help them do it.
You don’t really need the rest of the book, do you? Top of page one, “America is being ripped off by foreign countries who are plundering our economy - and our leaders are helping them do it. Yours, Dick Morris”. I’m struggling to imagine the content of Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation though. Literally zombies? Are Obama Zombies a special type of zombie? Where is the liberal machine, and what does it look like? Look, you carry on, you kids. Fill up the rest of the page with brilliance. I’ve shown you the way; now carry the torch from my wizened old hands and use it to light a fire!
- In fact this was Planet of Fire, the penultimate Peter Davison story. Shrewdly the BBC only sells it as part of a boxed set, rather than as a standalone DVD, because it’s the one where Peri etc. Those old Doctor Who DVDs are great, aren’t they? The stories are rubbish but the extraneous material is fascinating - the commentary, behind-the-scenes shots of the BBC circa 1974, lost footage and so forth.