Shrinklits. [Hardcover]

Maurice. Sagoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1971

From Antigone to Lolita, from Beowulf to The Hobbit. The world's greatest literature is summarized in Maurice Sagoff's hilarious light verse. The result-70 intoxicating distillations of the classics everyone has been taking far too seriously for far too long. Selection of the Quality Paperback Book Club and a New York Times Best Seller. 180,000 copies in print.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Reductio ad absurdum!

70 Epic tales & heroic myths, dense theories & windy texts, oral traditions & really long novels-all reduced to 34 minutes reading.

Learn Mill's Principles of Political Economy in couplets, Darwin's Origin of Species as a chant. Read Jane Eyre in 30 lines, Beowulf in 26, The Canterbury Tales in 21. Discover Melville's Moby Dick in 8 lines of verse, fully footnoted. Catch up on Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in a record 3-stanza report.

Plus many more that are less-70 ShrinkLits in all.

Full-color illustrations throughout.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Maurice Sagoff

Age: 88

journalist-turned-poet who wrote Shrinklits: 70 of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size, a collection that cleverly and succinctly summarized literary classics in verse. Passed away March 18,1998.

Roslyn Schwartz (born September 29, 1951) is a Canadian children's author and animator.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, she was raised in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. Schwartz is the author of The Mole Sisters series, The Smoker's Addictionary (1985), Rose and Dorothy (1981), and Tales from Parc la Fontaine (2006). The The Mole Sisters has won international acclaim and was made into a T.V. cartoon series.

She also created two short animated films with the National Film Board of Canada, I'm your Man and The Arkelope.[ --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Doubleday (January 1971)
• ISBN-10: 0385063431
• ISBN-13: 978-0385063432
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,537,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Every Reader Should Own This, October 9, 2006

By 

John R. Holmes, Jr. (Anacortes, Washington) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: ShrinkLits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size (Paperback)

I can only add to what others have written. Each of these "ShrinkLits" (Shrunken Literature) is unbelievably clever, but without being formulaic.

Another reviewer mentioned Beowulf. Sure, I liked the couple Danish but I laughed out loud at, "Later on as King of Geats, He performed prodigious feats. Till he met a foe too tough (Non-Beodegradable stuff)."

Or how about The Count of Monte Cristo, which ends "Tremendous wealth helps one compete. Persistence pays, revenge is sweet. The combination's hard to beat."

The Bridge of San Luis Rey - a terrible book and a worse movie - in its ShrinkLit form comes out a beautiful poem.

I don't know why Maurice Sagoff never made a bigger splash, but this one book is a winner.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Humorous if you are familiar with the work, otherwise could be incomprehensible, July 6, 2006

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: ShrinkLits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size (Paperback)

A shrinklit is a short piece of humorous prose that is a very brief synopsis of a major literary piece. They were defined by the Sagoff and fifty shrinklets appear in this book. Two of the smaller examples are:

"The Communist Manifesto", by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Workers, unite!
Workers, you knight-harassed, feudal lord-ridden serfs in an earlier day;
Workers, you night-toiling vassals of bourgeois exploiters of today;
Workers, you nigh-to-death victims of class war, arise - grab the power away!
Workers, unite!

"The Raven", by Edgar Allan Poe

Raven lurches
In, perches
Over door.
Poet's bleary
Query -
"Where's Lenore?"
Creepy bird
Knows one word:
"Nevermore."

While I found the poems fun to read, if you aren't familiar with the work being referenced, then it is quite likely that the humor will be lost on you. I am not saying that you need to have read the work, but you must know the basics of the work to appreciate the references. For example, without knowing the story of Don Quixote, the poem that makes reference to windmill monsters will be incomprehensible.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Hilarious, August 23, 1999

By 

Amy Lidster - See all my reviews

This review is from: ShrinkLits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down to Size (Paperback)

This truly amusing book will take you back to your days of required reading and give you a new appreciation of these works. While not at all a replacement for these classics. Students should read these too in an effort to 'not hate' what they are reading. The cover art is funny too. Check out the picture for "Antigone"