A Reader's Manifesto
An attack on the growing pretentiousness of American literary prose
by B. R. Myers
July/August 2001

A year ago The Atlantic Monthly published this essay which prompted fervent defenses of the "pretentious" American literary prose it attacked, as weel as hearty agreements to its arguments. This year, an expanded version will come out in print. Not having bought my copy yet, I'll be reading the version available through the Atlantic's website and posting my comments here. If you've read it already, I'd appreciate if you share your own observations with me.

On August 18, the Washington Post printed on its "Style Invitational" column a selection of entries for its July 21 contest, "Retell Sales," where it invited its readers into submitting the beginning of a famous story as it would have been retold by a famous person. Here are my personal favorites:

Just sit right down and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip
Starting in a northern port aboard a whaling ship, aboard a whaling ship.
Oh, you can call me Ishmael, and the captain is A-hab,
We're out to kill a big white whale, and sell off all his flab, and sell off all his flab...
— Moby-Dick, retold by Sherwood Schwartz, creator of Gilligan's Island

Last night I dreamt of Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the gate, which could represent the separation of my life with Mrs. Hopper from that with Max. Or it could be symbolic of female genitalia. I wonder what my life would be today if Mrs. Hopper had not been a surrogate mother-image, drawing off the unresolved love-hate fixation I had for my own mother. "What do you think?" asked Max. He was never very helpful.
— Rebecca, retold by Sigmund Freud

In the beginning, all the matter in the universe was compressed into a 10-dimensional black hole approximately 1 Planck unit in radius. The first 20-{+4}{+3} of a second was characterized by a period of hyper-inflation that caused the universe to expand to the size of a grapefruit. This condition remained static for the next 320 microseconds, until perturbatory Feynman quantum fluctuations resulted in...
— Genesis 1:1, retold by Stephen Hawking

Worried about their families, the townspeople went to the little blue train, and pleaded with him to carry the food up over the mountain. 'I cannot, I am too small,' said the train, crying. Then he ordered my eight- cassette personal empowerment training system...
— The Little Engine That Could, retold by Tony Robbins

One morning after a restless sleep, Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself transformed in his bed into a giant radioactive superpowered insect...
— Metamorphosis, retold by Stan Lee

The driver finishes his check-up of the controls. The train is set to leave the station. This engine has traveled down different railways, not all of them with a known terminus to arrive to. On these paths, switches are thrown without warning, leading the train to a different track from the one it was going down. Some go around in circles, with no clear exit to leave them. Some go through dark tunnels where apparently no light can pierce the shroud of shadows. But the train never stops and must reach it's next destination, whatever it may be.

All aboard!

{Edited on August 31, 2002. Changed "clear terminus" for "known terminus" and "it was advancing on" to "it was going down."}