Comments on: ‘War and Peace’ … in a handful of sentences

By: Debra B.

Debra B. — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 17:46:00 +0000

War and Peace; it’s about, uh, War and Peace. The End.

“This way people might be exposed to books that they would never have experinced (sic) reading or otherwise. . .”.

Reading a short synopsis is not the equivalent of “reading a good book.” Aside from this, as a college literature teacher, I generally find no joy discussing a “good book” with people who have only read one page out of 350.

By: Brandi

Brandi — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:54:09 +0000

No time to read the classics??? Some people need to rethink their priorities.

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:04:10 +0000

I think this is a great idea! I have always wanted to read War and Peace but have never made it past the first chapter. This way people might be exposed to books that they would never have experinced reading or otherwise; and honestly what is the best thing about reading a good book but discussing it with others.

By: thom

thom — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 18:55:21 +0000

Capitalism unfurled; tongue-in-check; completely anticipated; NBD.

I’ve taught college for 26 years and this is just normal adolescent behavior. Only the technology and opportunities have changed. Does anyone remember configuring the output of your first TI-80 calculator to read obscene words, depending upon how you held the display? Same thing.

By: Jeannie B. Smith

Jeannie B. Smith — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:29:18 +0000

My first reaction was astonishment, my second was anxiety, my third was disgust. The US is dumbing- down to such a sad level the most brilliant thoughts of the greatest minds can be reduced to the level of ‘Dick and Jane’ and pass as knowledge.

By: Jack Lennan

Jack Lennan — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:03:03 +0000

Except for Jenny and Michael above, here’s a quarter each for the rest of you. Go buy yourselves a sense of humor.

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:29:48 +0000

It’s just humor, folks. Don’t despair.

By: William Bryant

William Bryant — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:34:44 +0000

What’s New? A generation of A.D.D.’ers with an education at pretigous university think that they will speak directly to and for the Techno-Generation by reducing the spirit and imagination of literature’s genious to the monosyllabic grunts of Homoerectus!

By: Jenny

Jenny — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:12:24 +0000

Although I bemoan the lack of attention span and the hyper-connected reality of so many who think they should be entertained all the time and see their main function in life as consumers, I don’t think that this undertaking has anything to do with the things posters are complaining about… other than that it is capitalizing on it. I suspect that it IS supposed to be humorous, and the only people who will get anything out of it will be those who have read the classics that are being twitterized. Sounds like an entrepreneurial couple of kids.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:07:08 +0000

So, just because kids have a short attention span we should encourage that? I am hoping that this is meant as some sort of humor.

In many ways this just encourages the sort of behavior that everyone is angry about in the financial world. Faster is better, who has time to cultivate business or knowledge for the long term? I think this also contributes to the poor political leadership we see from both sides of the aisle. This why politicians focus so much on making 10 second sound bites that don’t have any substance, but sound great on the surface.

This is the next generation of leaders, which is a little scary to me. And for the record I am not far out of the target age group at only 36.

By: Christine

Christine — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:05:44 +0000

Isn’t it a shame that our language, the very thing that separates us from the grunting animals, is be reduced to a few grunts. And all this so the participants can quickly move on to the next mono- or bi-syllabic message. Umm, progress? Why did our ancestors work so hard to free us from the restrictions imposed by the ruling classes which kept most people illiterate and ignorant? No one can keep up with the amount of silly information passing as important data anyway. It’s all twit….

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:21:22 +0000

Born. Good stuff. Bad stuff. Meaning? Purpose? Die.

Kind of trivializes things doesn’t it? And yet, I think people will really think they’ve “read” and “understood” the Great Books by reading the Twitterature version.

By: KT

KT — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:11:19 +0000

I find this truly sad that today’s students feel the need to reduce such great works of literature to afew sentences. I guess this is unfortunately a statement about today’s youth and how “technology” has greatly diminshed their attention spans.

By: Virginia

Virginia — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:44:03 +0000

Cliff notes run amuck! If kids can make the time to twitter, text, im, and whatever, they can make the time to read at least Cliff Notes of these wonderful literary works. There’s no way to capture the essence of such deep works in 120 words or less. Instead of wasting your time, producing worthless Twitterature, take the time to read the big, long, books; you’ll be glad you did.