These people must be destroyed. By any means necessary.

Well, let me just stop short of advocating violence against them. But in this case, it took some pretty hard braking.

And don't say, "Nobody would confuse the movie with the original." It happens all the time. It happened on a Tolkien panel I moderated at last year's Worldcon. (Not the panel Patrick was on, thank goodness.)

Extremism in the pursuit of exactitude and finesse is no vice. Even when (especially when) potshotting barnsides.

I thought I had it, but apparently I'm wrong. "Shot off?"

Though I do have to admit that having a copy of "Latifah in Wonderland" would be amusing for novelty value.

What I want to know is whether Moby-Dick is going to be a title where there's only one available role, or two; and if the latter, who's the other one besides Ishmael?

Moby-Dick could be amusing if you could reassign the names for all the roles -- for instance, re-manning the Pequod with the executives of your failed startup.

I agree that there are many appalling things done to literature these days, like the 'translated' Shakespeares that our otherwise wonderful public library is acquiring these days. But literature shouldn't be put on a pedestal -- it should be delighted in, enjoyed, savored -- and that can well include playing with it. (Even Our Esteemed Blogger seems to come close to this interpretation with her comments about Moby Dick and the failed startup.)

Isn't getting worked up about this missing the joke (not the funniest joke ever, I admit, but amusing enough if you've got cash to burn)?

SF

PS: On the topic of rewritten Shakespearen endings and Lewis Carroll: my favorite bit of rewritten Shakespeare is Lewis Carroll's question about MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, (which I found in the back of the Signet edition), where he provides various ways that Hero or Beatrice could have defused Claudio's accusations. -- And like the Customized Classics (although in a much richer vein) this seems to me to be precisely the sort of engaged, lively, irreverent spirit with which one should approach good writing -- or else it will seem dead as a mumbled liturgy, and who will want to read it?

This is a kind of dull way of messing around with The Classics, but aside from that, I don't see anything wrong with it. Ever read David Garrick's version of Romeo and Juliet? He thought that it would be much more harrowing if Juliet woke up after Romeo had taken the poison but before he died, so that they could exchange some tearful angsty dialogue before Romeo expired and Juliet stabbed herself.

On the other hand, I feel like maybe this is taking it a little too far; I feel like a quite good joke could be made up with a combination of this "Customized Classics" post and this update on the classic Shakespeare/Monkey conundrum.

Well well. Methinks the bloggers do protest too much! Quite a little tempest in a teapot being stirred up here. Just to make/clarify a few points:

1. We don't take ourselves that seriously, and as somebody commented it's mainly meant as a fun and novel gift. And, how likely are people to be reading classic books in the first place? If it gets people to read them, well and good. We take it in the spirit of good fun and find it quite amusing when people get in a big huff over purity.

1a. The lack of iambic pentameter? That's missing the point entirely. And the whole happy ending incidentally started out with an employee quickly whipping up the "irreverent" version for a personal gift; then she suggested we put it up on the web site. NOT A SINGLE PERSON HAS ORDERED THE TRAGIC VERSION SINCE THEN! The people who buy our books don't care. The people who sniff at us would never buy any of the books in the first place.

2. We are NOT printing out Gutenberg texts. We would have certainly liked to! The Gutenberg texts are RIDDLED with errors, and the plain text formatting is a laughable attempt at "purity". Try rather many trips to the local library, and 3 human editors going through these things line by line, semicolon by semicolon.

3. If anybody's reading this, you can use the code LITERARYSNOB for a 20% discount (it's good for the first 5 uses) :)

While it's kind of you to offer me a discount on your product, the texts it would amuse me to alter in that fashion aren't likely to appear on your list of available titles any time soon. I can see no way around that problem; so if I want to take a PD electronic text file, swap out the characters' names, pour it into a book-design template, and have the results perfect bound with a stock-art cover, I'll just have to do it myself.

As a semi-serious suggestion, have you considered doing Customized Classics editions of some of the Victorian (and earlier) porn that's in the public domain? I should think that would have some real commercial appeal. It is, after all, the ultimate reader-identification literature.

See also The Complete Works of Shakespeare Reduced and Shakespeare in Love.

Now that would be a fun one to have bound up into an edition of the play.

"Become a deranged maniac in the ultimate highbrow chase novel!"

http://www.customizedclassics.com/moby.asp

Anne: Just so. Anyone who doesn't think literary snobs write their own Mary Sues has never seen The Best Man.

[Enter HAMLET, followed by GHOST.]

GHOST: Oi! Mush!

HAMLET: Yer?

GHOST: I was f*cked!

[Exit GHOST.]

HAMLET: O F*ck.

[Exit HAMLET.]

[Slightly gentrified by y.t. --cd]

"On the other hand, I feel like maybe this is taking it a little too far; I feel like a quite good joke could be made up with a combination of this "Customized Classics" post and this update on the classic Shakespeare/Monkey conundrum."

It's apparent to me that the monkeys involved in the research are having difficulties because they haven't been given a computer properly tailored for their use.

Some excerpts from this 1990 paper:

"A typical gorilla response to anger or excitement is to run full speed and backhand the object of the anger. For Koko, this means a 260-pound animal running at about 20 miles per hour, swinging her arm with a force comparable to a 10-pound shotput traveling at 100 miles per hour. Accordingly, Tom Ferrara faced a significant design challenge in developing the workstation - a Mac II computer, a 19" Sony monitor, and a touch screen - into a package which could withstand these extreme forces. Failure of the physical system could only be tolerated if it did not endanger Koko in any way. [...]

"A standard MicroTouch capacitive screen optically bonded to a one-inch thick piece of tempered glass was finally selected. [...]

"The Monitor is mounted on a sliding assembly that is dampened with gas struts with 3" of travel. This provides shock absorption in the event that Koko should throw her weight into the screen area. The final unit as delivered is 28 5/8" tall x 21 1/4" wide x 39 1/4" long. Passive ventilation is provided by slots which are designed to channel any foreign materials (bananas, feces, etc.) away from the CPU....

"So far, three applications have been developed to familiarize Koko with the touch screen interface. The first is four digitized animal pictures that make the animals sound when touched. The second shows a picture for each letter of the alphabet (developed by the Gorilla foundation) and speaks the name of the picture when it is pressed. The final application is called KokoPaint. It is a simplified color painting program which allows Koko to select from a few colors and finger-paint with them."

(Large Hall. Enter Hamlet, Laertes, Court, Gertrude, Claudius.)

Laertes Oi, wanker: let92s get on with it.
Hamlet Delighted, f*ckface.
(They fight and both are poisoned by the poisoned sword.)
Laertes F*ck!
Hamlet F*ck!
(The Queen drinks.)
Gertrude F*cking odd wine!
Claudius You drunk the wrong f*cking cup, you stupid cow!
Hamlet (Pouring the poison down Claudius92 throat.) Well, f*ck you!
Claudius I92m fair and squarely f*cked.
Laertes Oi, mush: no hard feelings, eh?
Hamlet Yer.
(Laertes dies.)
Hamlet Oi! Horatio!
Horatio Yer?
Hamlet I92m f*cked. The rest is f*cking silence.
(Hamlet dies.)
Horatio F*ck: that was no ordinary wanker, you know.
(Enter Fortinbras.)
Fortinbras What the f*ck92s going on here?
Horatio A f*cking mess, that92s for sure.
Fortinbras No kidding. I see Hamlet92s f*cked.
Horatio Yer.
Fortinbras F*cking shame: f*cking good bloke.
Horatio Too f*cking right.
Fortinbras F*ck this for a lark then. Let92s piss off.
(Exeunt with alarums.)

...or the classic Gilligan's Island Hamlet/Carmen episode, complete with "I ask to be or not to be" sung to the tune of the Habanera and "neither a borrower nor a lender be/never forget: stay out of debt" to the Toreador Song.

Being a latchkey kid myself, this episode marked my first acquaintance with Hamlet *and* Carmen. To my shame, every time I hear the Toreador Song I still hum Skipper's version under my breath.

I like Shakespeare's Lost Comedie by ye Firesign Theatre, too, even though it's not at all in the right meter.

1a. The lack of iambic pentameter? That's missing the point entirely.

But that is the point. Getting the detail right is what makes good parody. The R&J sequel from the Beard/Cerf/Durkee/Kelly "Book of Sequels" did it far better.

"The pharmacist who hath this poison sold
Perchance made timid by the awful law
That death for death's prescription doth prescribe
In place of poison put a potent draught
That causeth deepest sleep and nothing more ...

See here, the blade is set upon a spring
Concealed within the dagger's hollow hilt
Which doth contain a vial of ruby juice..."

etc