More reasons why posh literary magazines reject my submissions

On the other hand, perhaps I'm wrong, and it's not that some famous novelists hyped up their stories too much as I suggested in my recent post in which I dumbed-down novel titles.

Perhaps novelists have, in fact, been over-cautious.  Maybe some classic literature would be improved if the authors had just pushed the limits a little and not been so circumspect......

Louisa May Alcott might have written Great Big Humungous Women, in which a genteel 19th century American family reacts to the pressures of life with Marmee and life without Dardee by slathering Nutella onto enormous pieces of cornbread, making the search for contentedness in family life somewhat more difficult, particularly when the budgeting for dress material gets tricky.  When one of the four daughters gets a terminal illness, there are unseemly fights over who gets her portion, and Marmee becomes distressed, particularly as, when a wealthy neighbour offers them a Christmas feast, the girls are too stuffed to appreciate it.

Harper Lee might have written To Bash the Brains Out of a Whole Flock of Mockingbirds, a touching coming-of-age tale set in 1930s Alabama in which Scout Finch and her brother Jem decide to take absolutely no notice of their moral and upstanding father's advice and, while a court case is going on, distracting the rest of the town, sneak out with a couple of hammers.  They re-enact a computer game called 'Shock the Flock' they have been shown by Boo Radley, who is, in this version of the novel, just as bad as everyone feared.

And William Golding might have written Lord of the Giant Hornets, a sad tale in which a group of schoolboys lands on a desert island, having been in a plane crash caused by a swarm of millions of giant hornets.  The hornets' leader, though - Lord Hornet - recoils instinctively at the sight of the schoolboys, having never seen anything so disgusting before, and gets his swarm to retreat into the forest while they think about how to deal with the situation.  Eventually, they decide to huddle really close together, forming the shape of a pig.  One silly boy hurls a spear into the middle of the swarm, being fed up of vegetables and thinking it is pork.  Later, a captain of a passing ship sees what he thinks is a plume of smoke signifying an SOS, but it is in fact the hornets in their 'We Just Ate Lots of Boys' celebratory formation: something the captain only finds out too late when he is examining the corpse of a child and Lord Hornet takes a chunk out of his backside.

Comments

  1. The Entire Observable Universe According to Garp - John Irving

    Paddy Clarke - ha, ha, ha, hahahahahahahaha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, HA! ha! HA!HAHAHAHAHAHA! - Roddy Doyle

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  2. Moptop - you have no idea how much you cheered up my Monday morning. These - especially the Paddy Clarke one - made me giggle so much.

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  3. Oh, you are good. Laughing very hard at your wit. Thanks for stopping by my blog so I could pop over here to yours. Needed a good belly workout.

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  4. Captain Corelli's Symphony Orchestra

    Catch 2,741

    The Story of Oh...oh...oh..oh..OH!...ohhhhh.

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  5. I want a copy of each of those books AT ONCE!

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  6. I'm sorry Miss, but I can't do better. You made me burst out laughing.

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  7. Thanks, Christie - glad to oblige with the workout thing.

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  8. Brokenbiro - Fabulous suggestions. Thanks for joining in with the fun.

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  9. Jinksy - I will get writing straight away ...

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  10. Deborah - as you can see from the comments, my suggestions are by no means the funniest. But thanks for your appreciation.

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  11. Great post you always make me laugh

    Kate xx

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  12. Really Miss, who wants to be published in posh mags anyway when they can make a whole lot of bloggers laugh.

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  13. Thanks, Kate. I think you need a good laugh sometimes, looking at the people you work with ....

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  14. Friko - yeah, you're right. I'll stop submitting to the Times Literary Supplement and, while I'm at it, I may as well stop sending the photos of me in a bikini to Harpers & Queen. They don't seem that keen either.

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  15. Cold Molehill - a soldier survives the horrors of the American Civil War but can't be arsed to make the journey home.

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  16. elizabethm - that's a good one!

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  17. Anonymous13/3/10 13:38

    this tickled me pink...you should be on stage...very dry...very drole...

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  18. Ah, Sarah - just waiting for the call, just waiting for the call ...

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