Deppraisal: Condensed Books
Imagine that you’re a wedding planner and that a lovely young couple with a very large check book appointed you their event coordinator over a year ago. Month upon month you spent, artistically designing every moment of what you’re sure will be the season’s most splendid nuptial. You’ve exhausted every ounce of your creativity and genius. Indeed, you’ve poured your heart and soul into the planning of this wedding, because you’re sure that upon its execution, you will become the most sought after matrimonial machinator in the region. This wedding will make your career.
At last, the day comes. You arrive at the church to witness the first stage of your flawless design. The minister waits at the altar. The groom fidgets nervously, flanked by his best man and ushers. The bridesmaids look spectacular.
Suddenly, the church doors burst open and the bride sprints to the altar as her wedding song is played at ten times the normal speed. The bride and groom wordlessly exchange rings. The ministers asks, “Do you?” Bride and groom respond together, “We do.” The happy couple make a mad dash back down the aisle toward the exit. The doves that were supposed to be released outside take flight within the church. The attending guests are showered with feathers and bird droppings as they hurl unopened boxes of rice into the air. Within seconds, everyone is in their cars peeling out of the parking lot to the reception hall.
Aghast, you follow. When you get to the party, the bride and groom are already dancing their first dance, even as the groom is attempting to remove his new wife’s garter. All seven courses of the dinner are rolled out of the kitchen simultaneously. The guests speed dine as they do the chicken dance. Without fanfare, the ten-tier cake that took days to make is skated out to the bride and groom. Each of them sloppily grabs a piece and pelt each other. Hundreds of flashes go, the centerpieces disappear, and the hall is empty… Except for you.
You remain there in the dark. Shaking. Weeping. What happened? All the planning… All the late nights… All the changes… All that work… It was perfect. Well, at least it would have been perfect had it been presented as it was originally conceived. Never in your wildest dreams did you think that anyone could ever take such a masterpiece of a wedding and condense it.
Neither, I’m sure, are any authors genuinely happy about having their novels being condensed by Reader’s Digest. We are all familiar with America’s most circulated magazine that imparts stories of optimism and personal triumph. Most of us, I imagine, are also familiar with the magazine’s quarterly anthologies that have been raping literature since 1950. Yes, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books has shown a lot of gaul over the decades, taking magnum opi such as Cry, the Beloved Country and To Kill a Mockingbird and editing them into nothing more than glorified Cliff’s Notes. They even condensed A Christmas Carol and the original format takes about half an hour to read.
This Philistine abomination continues today (though under a different name: Reader’s Digest Select Editions), and I just don’t get it. Reading a condensed book is like watching a movie with reels missing. I just don’t get it, and please don’t try to explain it to me. It’s just stupid.
And it’s not just stupid because I say so. Certainly the ridiculousness of the condensed book is reflected in its after market viability or lack there of. Whether on the resale shelf or the auction block, the value of a Reader’s Digest Condensed Book/Select Edition is zero… nada… zilch… nil… poo-poo.
Don’t believe me? Do you have any? Go ahead, try to sell them…
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Marianne
Libraries won’t even take them for their fund raising booksales because they have to pay to get rid of them when the sale is over.
J. Bear Savo
So true…
Roxane
AMEN!
Seraphine
i hate to tell you this, john bear, but the internet is the great condenser of our generation, as surely as reader’s digest was the great condenser of our grandparents generation. we don’t read news anymore, we get snippets of news; we scan headlines and think that is all we need to know. even that reader’s digest ten-minute edition of a christmas carol is nine-and-a-half minutes too long.
what society should shorten is the legalese that companies use to screw unsuspecting consumers via user’s agreements, credit card agreements, financial prospectuses and mutual fund brochures. everytime apple updates their itunes user’s agreement, for instance, i just click yes regardless of the agreement because if i don’t agree, my poor little (expensive) ipod would be worthless.
when my employer asks me to sign a new employment contract, what choice do i have if i want to keep my job? such “agreements” and “boiler plate language” are as useless as the oil-bespoiled feathers on a sick pelican.
contracts and disclosures should say what they mean: you have no privacy. you have no rights– condensed so even i can understand it.
J. Bear Savo
I would venture to offer that since the invention of the newspaper, most people were more interested in headlines than the deeper story. Such is why we spent so much time in my journalism classes learning how to write leads. If a reader couldn’t get the major points of a news story in the first paragraph, then the article was crap.
I will, however, agree with you that legalese needs to be go away. You’re a 100% correct on that point.
too tired for porn
i quite agree with you, condensing anything has a tendency to destroy its true essence. and yet for more years than i would care to guess, you must remember or at least mention, that other great authority on condensing………… CAMPBELL’S SOUP !!!!
which i am sure you will find in the back of more cupboards and cabinets than homemade preserves. and for all probabilities, are just as resellable, for they are without a doubt, those things that come in cans, of which you allude to, but do not name in your other great literary endeavor.
congrats and good luck on your tv special
as always – lenny
J. Bear Savo
Thanks, Lenny. Always great to hear from you.