John Crace

This book hilariously summarises the great and not so great classics of modern English literature from the last century. Includes Mrs Dalloway, Midnight's Children,Lolita and many others.

The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century

Brideshead Abbreviated

Gavin

A tasting platter of C20th literature (one book synopsised per year of the century), as well as very successful pastiche, as well as highbrow larfs, and also, occasionally, a tiny philosophical critique of revered writers. It is of course easy to make anything ridiculous if you compress it enough, but Crace is not cheap about it. He reserves most of his scorn for the obscene sensationalists (Ballard, Burroughs, Joyce, Kundera). Here is the main joke Crace makes in at least half of all of them, fourth-wall shamelessness:

  “Why do you do Junk, Bill?”
“Because once I´ve shovelled enough garbage into my body” I replied, “I’ll get away with shovelling any old garbage into print. Take it from me, some suckers will one day call Naked Lunch a masterpiece”.
  


I read books about books because I'm a prig: my ignorance of these things makes me anxious. As a result of reading Crace, I can tell I won't read about fifty of the hundred. So, big gains, even if the larfs wear thin halfway through.

Brideshead Abbreviated The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century

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