from one hundred great books in haiku by david bader:
note: if you know me, you will know my extreme disdain for cliffs notes. go there at your peril.
what's below is for laughs.
d.h. lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover:
On the grounds, fresh game.
On the new gamekeeper, fresh
Lady Chatterley.
herman melville, Moby Dick:
Vengeance! Black blood! Aye!
Doubloons to him that harpoons
the Greenpeace dinghy.
jane austen, Pride and Prejudice:
(this is my one of my favourites)
Single white lass seeks
landed gent for marriage, whist.
No parsons, thank you.
charles dickens, Bleak House:
Fog, gloom, men in wigs --
the Chancery Court blights all.
See where law school leads?
william golding, Lord of the Flies:
'Kill him! Spill his blood!'
Marooned lads hold savage rites.
Choirboys learn how to prey.
samuel beckett, Waiting for Godot:
Act I. 'It's hopeless.
My boots don't fit. Where's God?'
Act II. The same thing.
william shakespeare, Hamlet:
'His mother wed his
dead murdered father's brother!'
Next Jerry Springer.
nathaniel hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter:
Grim, grey New England --
all adulterers receive
free monogramming.
vladimir nabokov, Lolita:
(this is very clever)
Lecherous linguist --
he lays low and is laid low
after laying Lo.
michel foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison:
Carceral discourse
polyvalently deployed.
Hot air gently blows.
george orwell, 1984:
Love is a thoughtcrime.
The Thought Police make Winston
forget whatsername.
charlotte bronte, Jane Eyre:
O woe! His mad wife --
in the attic! Had they but
lived together first.
christopher marlowe, Doctor Faustus:
A scholar trades a
few fun years for endless Hell.
Maths was not his field.
St. Augustine, The Confessions
This is just to say
I screwed around. Forgive me.
I enjoyed it so.
oscar wilde, The importance of being Ernest:
(very good)
Earnestly posing
as Ernest, Jack learns he's named
Ernest in earnest.
j.d. salinger, The Catcher in the Rye:
I flunked out again.
Crumby prep schools. Bunch of dopes.
Boy, I'm not kidding.
f. scott fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby:
(not good but for here for comparison with the novel)
Beauty to weep for --
coral, azure, apple green.
His custom-made shirts.
nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra:
Kindness is weakness!
Abhor pity, worship strength!
Be an uber-jerk!
michel de montaigne, Essays
Genteel French musings --
life, death, odd smells, my moustache.
Today's topic: Thumbs.
george eliot, Middlemarch
Stifling social roles,
small-town gossip -- beware the
eyes of Middlemarch.
ernest hemingway, The Sun Also Rises:
'Why can't we?' she said.
'War wound,' I said. 'Oy,' Cohn said.
Back to Harry's Bar.
