Sense and Nonsensibility Lampoons of Learning and Literature

Introduction This book is for people who, like ourselves, believe in culture -- in its existence and commercial value. It is for people who still believe in the "canon," that great body of learning and literature that has guided study and cultural debate for the last couple of thousand years. The canon has come under fire recently as the tired legacy of a small clique of dead white European males, most of whom rarely bathed and suffered from terrible gum disease. This is a book for those who disagree, those who strongly believe that Hegel remains as incomprehensible today as he was two centuries ago, and that Shakespeare is still as rewarding and relevant as SpongeBob.This is also a book for scholars, students, and all those who have chosen to dedicate their existence to intellectual pursuits in a deeply anti-intellectual age. As professors writing about the rewards of learning, we hope to show that there is more to life than generous remuneration, social prestige, political power, erotic adventure, and basic happiness.And yet, this is a book of modest ambition. Long ago we realized that we could not single-handedly reverse civilization's inexorable decline. We could, though, contribute to it. This is the path we have chosen. If we cannot revive the life of the mind from its increasingly vegetative state, then at least we could put a smile on the patient's face. Copyright 2004 by Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George Literary Mergers The international merger is now all the rage in global economic circles, with trillions of dollars in corporate betrothals announced each year. The book trade has hardly been immune to this trend, as many of the leading names in U.S. publishing now find themselves in mixed (and sometimes shotgun) marriages. While these giant international corporations initially pledged independence to their American subsidiaries, recently the industry has been rocked by the announcement that a number of publishers, in an effort to downsize their lists and attract new readers, have decided to extend their merge-mania to books themselves. This unprecedented decision promises to produce the first truly global literature. Here, then, is a sneak preview of Crown-Bertelsmann-Gallimard's catalog for its new "Books without Borders" series:Moby ShtickMelville's famous, though often ponderous, novel gains new narrative verve through this audacious merger with the fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Gone is the dour and monomaniacal Ahab. In his place we learn to love the fumbling, but well-meaning, Captain Gimpel, perhaps the greatest kvetcher in seagoing literature, who struggles valiantly, if conflictedly, to turn the Great White Whale into the most plentiful portion of gefilte fish the world has ever seen. (Illustrations by Leonard Baskin.)Huckleberry FaustThis book brings together Twain's beloved "sivilized" boy and Goethe's spirit of eternal negation. Together Huck, Jim, and Mephistopheles make an unbeatable team, as they pull off some of the most outrageous pranks in the annals of the picaresque novel (including the transformation of Aunt Sally into a poodle)! "You'll laugh out loud as Huck tries to pull the devil's tail out from under the darkest character in world literature" (Kirkus Reviews).The Old Man and the FleaHemingway's classic, as seen through a mirror Kafkaesquely. We find the protagonist wrestling, now not with a marlin but -- yet more symbolically still -- with a flea. The tension of the narrative and the grandeur of its hero are in no way dimmed, yet the subtle shift creates a novella with a distinctly absurdist, and so European, flavor.The Fullback of Notre DameVictor Hugo, the most redoubtable French novelist of nineteenth-century letters (helas), joins forces with Don DeLillo, tDouglas, Lawrence is the author of 'Sense and Nonsensibility Lampoons of Learning and Literature', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743260480 and ISBN 0743260481.