Reliable Persian plonk

Press, 30 May 1987, Page 23

Reliable Persian plonk

How to Become Ridiculously Well-read in One Evening. Edited by E. O. Parrott. Penguin, 1987. 188 pp. $10.99 (paperback). (Reviewed by Naylor Hillary) As the editor points out in his introduction, this could be the ultimate conservation book. How better to save trees than to reduce 150 weighty books to one modest volume? Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley,” for instance — here she is in two lines. Smart girls make passes At the working classes Joyce’s "Finnegan’s Wake” — it is here in four lines: Finnegan’s Wake Is one long spelling mistake With not a lot

Of plot. With 150 entries, and more than 30 contributors, this collection is an extended literary joke that ranges

from Homer and Beowulf to A. A. Milne and Anthony Burgess. It cries out for quotation, as when Cervantes’ vast work is reduced to 22 lines beginning: A sort of knightly Mr Fix-it, That’s the story of Don Quixote, Who travelled, battled, all in vain, And then, returned to fight again. Omar Khayyam’s mysteries are revealed: Wake up, to drink But not to think; Life simply isn’t viable. The world is odd And so is God, But Persian plonk’s reliable. As for Shakespeare, “Othello” is reduced to a series of newspaper headlines beginning: “Girl With

Everything Asks For Moor.” All great fun, but the jokes will work best for those who have read the original books.