The Oldie: Twitterature
 

Competition No 115

Two Americans are reducing world literature to episodes of 140 characters (letters or numbers. It is to be called Twitterature, after the bafflingly popular social networking email thingy. Please encapsulate a well-kinown novel or play in not more than 140 characters. Do mention the name of it as well, as I might not know.

Entries to 'Competition No 115 by 28th August. email comps@theoldie.co.uk

I am going to recycle a couple of unsuccessful limericks for the 'Condensing Jane' competition in The Speccie some time ago. Here they are, both less than 140 characters if you don't count spaces, and I reckon you don't.

Pride and Prejudice

Poor Elizabeth Bennett, a honey
Who’s pretty and witty and sunny,
Quite fancies rich Darcy
Who acts a bit arsy.
She wins him and marries the money



Persuasion

Her dad is a terrible prick,
And her sisters both make you quite sick.
How we suffer for Anne
Who rejected her man
When she ought to have snapped him up quick.

I'm not sure, but I think Twitter makes you count spaces.

PS--
I just copied each of your limericks into a Twitter box and confirmed that they both go over. Spaces count. "Persuasion" goes over even if spaces do not count.

PPS--
Your limericks remind me of the "fractured verse" limericks that appeared in Bumbershoot, i.e., limericks that condensed various famous poems. See http://www.umbrellajournal.com/summe.../contents.html

Twitter does make you count spaces but I'm not sure the competition does. read the rubric. Perhaps I might ask.

There was an old thread -- I think here in D&A -- with limericized great poems. Bob, you were one of the great champions. The Ozymandias one was brilliant, if I recall.

Edit: Found it: http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showth...ght=ozymandias

I hope I am not breaking any rules by doing this, but I just think it is a fine piece of work. From deep in the above-mentioned thread, Bob's Ozymandias limerick:

OZZIE REDUX

On a pedestal huge and Ionic
stood a emperor’s statue, iconic.
.....His carved words said “I’m
.....gonna last for all time,”
but the statue was broken. Ironic.

David R.

Sorry for another side trip, but the challenge reminds me of one of my favorite Monty Python sketches:

Summarize Proust Competition (content warning for rude language).

David R.

You get a box, do you? Lead us all to this bloody box. Hrrumph! Hrrumph! What about this then?

In Search of Lost Time

Time Remembered. Had a ball.
Buggery and bugger all.
Tedium beyond belief
Anglicised by Scott Moncrieff.

And here's another. This could become seriuorsly addictive.

Aeneas leaves Troy, Dad on back.
Beds Dido in Carthage. Alack!
Betrays her. Makes Italy home.
Fights Turnus. Kills Turnus. Thus Rome.

John, hope you don't mind, I tinkered with these:

Yours reads better. But I trimmed it down to a mere 143 characters. (without spaces)

Persuasion

Her dad--God, what a prick!
Her sisters both make you feel sick.
Alas for poor Anne
Who let go her man
When she should’ve snapped him up quick.


And, weighing in at exactly 145 words:


Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth finds Mr. Darcy
acts more than a little bit arsy.
Despite what he seems
He’s the man of her dreams.
So they wed, thereby ending the farcy.

Nice work, Marion. I had a little go at Liz Bennett myself.

Liz Bennett’s a honey
Who’s witty and sunny.
She fancies rich Darcy
Who acts a bit arsey
But Liz does the biz.
He is hers. She is his.

Moby Dick

Call me Ish. Nov.soul, meet can'bal, shipout. Capt. obsessed w/wht/whle. Blubber, sperm,ambergris. Wht/whl! Big2do. All die. Not me.

Giving you the dickens
 

YH Ish, ROTDLMAO. TSB! do u no c-im?:)


A Christmas Carol

Three spirits haunt a miser,
And when our tale is done,
They've left him kinder, wiser.
God bless us everyone.

Seeing Austin's spoken for here's Pushkin:

Onegin, rich brat,
turns Tanya down flat.
Steals pal’s girl. Fights duel,
kills pal. Final cruel
joke, falls madly
for Tanya. Ends badly.



Thanks David for the Proust competition ;-)

Xanadu

In Xanadu did kubla khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
where Alf the sacred river . . . .
hang on, it’s Porlock, on my twitter . . . .

tweet:
phat guy trying2 spread fud. nimby! imho hes a troll. not p2p fight. omg wywh 2save me. hes down. omg u did. aas tnx vm. im da king! 2g2bt! gotta psalm this1! cya l8r. david


English:
PHAT guy trying to spread fear uncertainty and disinformation. Not in my backyard!
In my humble opinion he's a troll. Not a peer to peer fight!
O, my God, I wish you were here to save me.
He's down!
O, my God, you did!
Alive and smiling thanks very much!
I'm the king! Too good to be true!
I've got to psalm this one! See you later. David.

Seree, how do you know that secret language?
I admit it. I've never sent, received nor read a twitter.

hey Janet
how? 4 kids, lots of text messaging -

for your unravelness: fud = fear uncertainty disinformation. nimby = not in my back yard. p2p = peer to peer. wywh = wish you were here. aas = alive and smiling. 2g2bt = too good to be true. I think you know the rest, so see you later!

John, do you think that the Oldies expect real twitter language like Seree's or will our shrunken heads pass muster?
Janet

In my opinion no - they won't understand it and, more to the point, neither will their readership which is people like you and me. Here's another.

Oliver Twist asked for more,
Then he fell among thieves, broke the law.
But Ollie done good when he shopped ‘em
And the good guys transported or topped ‘em.

THE THIRD MAN

Harry Lime
doesn't appear for a long time,
but then he's found,
underground.

Holly,
You just wrote about yourself ;-)

Love Oliver, John.

Janet, I tried to do a clerihew for Holly Martins but couldn't think of a rhyme!

I always rather fancied my Beowulf haiku:

I killed that monster
and his mother too O shit
here comes a dragon

But is Beowulf a play or a novel? I have an old Beowulf limerick that probably exceeds 140 spaces:


For most folks just one monster killed
would mean that their quota was filled.
   Not Beowulf! He
  dispatched (count 'em) three,
before his own lifeblood was spilled.

*

My other epic limerick:

The first time man failed to obey,
sing, Muse, of the hell man did pay.
  God said, Adam, leave!
  And don't forget Eve!
Save Eden, the whole world's your way!
  

Excuse me, but—
 

"Characters" ("letters and numbers") are not spaces by any stretch of the imagination, imho...

John, are we allowed only one entry for this contest, do you know? Or any number, and may we use our real names if more than one is allowed?


The Cherry Orchard

They’re in a trance,
won’t sell the manse,
much too tortured
about axing the orchard.
Friendly merchant pays
mortgage, will raze.

The answer is that I don't know. In Speccie comps you can make as many entries as you like, using as many pseudonyms as you like (though you have to give your real name and address so that they can mail you a cheque if you win). I sort of assume that The Oldie is the same. Since these entries are so short I should think you could makwe three or four as one entry and then they would pick what they liked. In the Speccie Jane Austen limerick competition I entered three limericks but only one won and I got a fiver for it. I mean five pounds.

OK, thanks!

Old black guy weds young white chick,
Speechifies, gets jealous quick.
Old black guy kills young white wife,
Speechifies and ends his life.

A hit! A very palpable hit!

Thanks to all for the laughs! Here's the shortest one:

Godot

They wait.
He's late.

Othello,
Godot,
Bravo

Don't Wait Up for Me

Godot?
No-
show.

Brilliant, Terese. It reminds me of the mostv succinct headline ever competition. The death of the Pope -

Pope? Nope.

Meanwhile Whitworth is now seriously addicted.

Son sees Ghost Dad.
Ghost says King bad.
‘Kill King!’ says Ghost.
‘Will co! King toast!’
Son seems off head.
Five Acts. All dead.

Smooth prick
Tempts chick.
Talks balls.
Chick falls.
God sees
Through trees.
What goes?
God knows.

I do see that it is difficult to convince the authorities that Paradise Lost is a novel.

Endgame

Hamm begins.
Nag and Nell
in their bins.
All in hell.

Hamlet

He had a whiff of Denmark's rot,
wondering: To be or not?

He couldn't easily decide,
yet somehow everybody died.

John, yours is 187 characters. Why not use only the first quatrain? (But what does "Will co" mean?)

Here's another:

Aeschylus: The Oresteia

Mom slays husband & Cassandra,
bro gets mother & cousin-lover.
Homicidal superfecta,
family values of Electra.

Terese, Those are TWO attempts. The first is Hamlet. Dash it, I must be losing my touch. Will co is what one chap piloting a Lancaster bomber says to another who has just given him an order. It is short for 'Will comply'. At least I think it is. Imagine Richard Todd and Leo Genn, if you are old enough to do so.

Depending on your point of view, the second part could be about Hamlet and Ophelia—except for "God sees/through trees." I thought somehow you'd injected Birnam Wood into the Elsinore vicinity by mistake, John. I should have known that couldn't happen, but I still think you should stick with the first four lines.

If I ever heard "Will co" in an old Brit film, I didn't recognize the words, but thanks for the ref!

"Wilco" isn't just old British military slang. It's standard CB radio slang. The pop group Wilco took it as their name. Terese, perhaps it would be more familiar as part of a phrase like, "Roger, wilco, over and out"?

That seems to ring a bell, Bob, but I really never had anything to do with CB radio. I may have heard it in a parody, but it's so long ago. If I'd known it meant "will comply" that would be a different matter. "Will do" rather than "wilco" was probably used by some.

Interesting slightly relevant article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/op...hott.html?_r=1

An old journalist remembers cablese when words cost one penny each. The cable was about a mentally disturbed Chinese man in New Zealand who used to dress as a Scot and ride a bicycle, and often made strange gestures to female cyclists.
unpanted kiltusage.