Alexander Aciman - Twitterature: The Worlds Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less

Twitterature: The Worlds Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Twitterature: The Worlds Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...28

Table of Contents

PENGUIN BOOKS

TWITTERATURE

The classics are so last century.The Guardian

Sincerest apologies to Shakespeare, Stendhal, and Joyce: how were we to know it would come to this?Mashable.com

The trouble with Twitter is, I think, that too many twits might make a twat.David Cameron

Twitterature makes me want to punch someone, preferably the authors. Theyre in Chicago. Im gonna take a road trip.

@damig, Twitter

A move likely to be greeted by book lovers with a mixture of horror and why-didnt-I-think-of-that jealousy.

Chicago Tribune

Just f *#%ing shoot me now.

Mike C., grouchyconservativepundits.com

ALEXANDER ACIMAN was born in 1990. A sophomore at the University of Chicago, he was graduated from Horace Mann School in New York City. He has worked in the offices of several publications, including The Paris Review and the late New York Sun, which he and the city of New York mourn every day upon noticing its absence from every newsstand as the copper sun rises to greet the metropolis. He has published many articles in both his high school and college newspapers, as well as three feature article-essays in The New York Times and one in The New York Sun. He is also a devoted follower of Napoleon Bonaparte. He believes that there is no better way to start a day than with a run or a bike ride, and is known on occasion to enjoy a game of bocce or to engage in pugilism. He would like to write, own a pair of John Lobb shoes, and live out his days reading and writing in the Mediterranean basin with his brothers.

EMMETT RENSIN was born in 1990. He is a sophomore at the University of Chicago, before which he attended the finest parochial school in all of Los Angeles. A Huffington Post contributor and ordained reverend, and unable to tie his shoelaces at the tender age of sixteen, he gave it all up to pursue his true dream: putting stickers on books. This he did with care and devotion for many long hours, ensuring that every book in the reference library of the world-renowned Museum of Jurassic Technology at which he was employed had its lovely laminated ascension number neatly stuck upon its spine. He emerged from this a brighter and more worldly man. Rensin contributes to the University of Chicagos Chicago Maroon as well as the Huffington Post but takes care to balance his stresses with the relaxing arts of coat collection and Richard Nixon enthusiasm. Such balance is necessary, as extremity might cause Rensins untimely death and prevent him from accomplishing his three life goals: penning the Great American Novel, mastery of card magic, and telling the perfect shaggy-dog joke.

Dedicated in Loving Memory
to the Victims of the R.M.S. Titanic

Introduction

Life can offer us no greater treasure than art. It is all that is beautiful, and all that allows a mans soul to take leave of the quotidian trifles that molest his waking mind, to be lifted to the highest peaks of experience, and to peer briefly into the sublime. It is that which removes man from the static residue of time and casts him into the gentle waters of the eternal. It is to hear and to speak softly in the beauteous tongue of antiquity, and yet to foresee all that will unfold through the illimitably growing passage of our universe.

In short, art is pretty sweet.

What a tragdie, then, that so many modern people find the great works of literature inaccessible, overwhelming, and even, perhaps, dull. It is not a defect of their character, nor any special ineptitude that has disposed them in this manner; rather, these great texts - timeless as they may be - are, in their present form, outdated. Who but college students, hermits, and disciples of the disgraced John Ludd can muddle through them with any hope of understanding? This is what we seek, through our humble efforts, to remedy.

While some may describe the reinvention of our worlds Great Works to suit the ever-evolving brain of the modern man as a triviality, a travesty, or that sucks, we prefer to think of ourselves as modern-day Martin Luthers. Herr Luther took the Holy Scripture itself, and seeing that the classic Vulgate no longer spoke to the souls of his contemporaries, he translated it into the vernacular of his time. By doing so, Luther unleashed a revolution of faith and literacy upon sixteenth-century Europe that had not been seen before and has not been equaled since.

In our own way, and in our own time, we hope to do the same.

However, its probably best if we stay clear of the Bible.

You may be wondering, good sirs, what exactly we intend to do with these great works of art. What one must keep in mind is that the literary canon is not valued for its tens of thousands of dull, dull words but for the raw insight into humanity it provides. While perhaps an unwieldy tome was the best method of digesting this knowledge during a summer spent in the Victorian countryside in the Year of Our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Three, times have changed. Virginity must not be distracted with books, nor damsel-chasing pacified with poetry. Instead we must run free into the world and not once look back.

And so, we give you the means to absorb the strong voices, valuable lessons and stylistic innovations of the Greats without the burdensome duty of hours spent reading. We take these Great Works and present their most essential elements, distilled into the voice of Twitter - the social networking tool that with its limit of 140 characters a post (including spaces) has refined to its purest form the instant-publishing, short-attention-span, all-digital-all-the-time, self-important age of info-deluge - and give you everything you need to master the literature of the civilized world.

For indeed, does any man have such great pretense as to suppose that he may digest all that it is right and proper for him to have digested in the stunted mortal fit granted to him by Providence? Perhaps in the eighteenth year of your life you sat on a porch asking yourself: What exactly is Hamlet trying to tell me? Why must he mince words and muse in lyricism and, in short, whack about the shrub? Such questions are no doubt troubling - and we believe they would have been resolved were the Prince of Denmark a registered user on Twitter.com, well versed in the idiosyncrasies and idioms of the modern day. And this, in essence, is what we have done. We have liberated poor Hamlet from the rigorous literary constraints of the sixteenth century and made him - without losing an ounce of wisdom, beauty, wit, or angst - a happening youngster. Just like you, dear reader.

In brief - and we mean this literally - we have created our generations salvation, a new and revolutionary way of facing and understanding the greatest art of all arts: Literature.

And allow us now to open
The eternal aperture,
To the brilliant soul of common man:
We now present you... Twitterature.

The Catcher in the Rye

by J. D. Salinger

@HoldenLolfield

Fucked up for the last time. Theyre throwin me out of the old school! Still havent seen a goddamn horse! LOL!

Do you ever wonder what they used in Egypt to embalm mummies? Its special ancient mummy juice, thats what it is.

Next page

1234567...28

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Twitterature: The Worlds Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less»

Look at similar books to Twitterature: The Worlds Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

William Shakespeare

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Collins edition)

William Shakespeare

Hamlet: A Screenplay Adaptation

William Shakespeare

The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Idle Nadia

Tweets from Tahrir: Egypts revolution as it unfolded, in the words of the people who made it

Dromgoole

Hamlet: globe to globe - taking shakespeare to every country in the world

Douglas Nick

Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters Or Less

Forefront Books

The Tweets of President Donald J. Trump: The Most Liked and Retweeted Tweets from the Inauguration through the Impeachment Trial

Peter Oborne

How Trump Thinks: His Tweets and the Birth of a New Political Language

Homer

The Iliad (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Herman Melville

Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

J. K. Lowers

Hamlet (Cliffs Notes)

William Shakespeare (Edited by Sylvan Barnet)

The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark

Discussion, reviews of the book Twitterature: The Worlds Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.