The Classics Reclassified

1960, undated fourth printing from McGraw-Hill
Richard Armour
"Nostalgically Illustrated by Campbell Grant"
The Classics Reclassified
Original price unknown, purchase price $5.00
Good condition hardcover with worn dustjacket
B-

I've been doing this project for awhile (although in some ways I'm just getting started), if I'm at a book that mocks four of the "classics" I've reread, plus a couple others I've read but don't own, The Iliad and The Scarlet Letter.  The seventh work is Moby Dick, which I read some of, but I took Armour literally when he said you could skip almost one hundred chapters without losing anything.

Of the four classics I've reviewed, I seem to enjoy Armour's takes in proportion to how much I enjoyed the play/novel.  So Julius Caesar I'm meh about, Ivanhoe has its moments, and Silas Marner and David Copperfield hold up, as do his snarks about them.  He's a very gentle snarker, although he does point out contrivances and cliches, particularly in Dickens.  Each section has a short biography, a pun-filled summary, and a quiz, the last of these being my favorite.

I remember reading Armour at a pretty young age, like 12, and I think I read this book before I read some of the works described in it, and even on rereadings I'm influenced by Armour, as with the quiz question, "Honestly, how could Ivanhoe have picked that dumb blonde, Rowena, over Rebecca?"  I just wish the book was as funny as I remember.

The illustrations by Grant are suited to the text, although almost every nose is bizarre in some way.  The best pictures are probably of Hester Prynne looking so darned proud of her "A," although I might be influenced by the movie Easy A, which does attempt to answer Armour's questions on whether Hester had one special "A" blouse, several with the letter, or a detachable "A" that could be used on any blouse.  "This is the sort of problem that makes literary scholarship so fascinating."

And welcome to the 1960s.  We'll be here a much longer while.