Stories Out of Books
October 19, 2008

While looking for new additions to our Book-Related Blogs page, I came across a link to natural/artificial, a blog by a writer and librarian who, back in 2007, wrote a wickedly funny post titled “You’ve Been Warned (no, really, you have)” about James Patterson’s then-newest book. It had been severely panned even by the author’s hardcore fans. Not surprisingly, the blogger also disliked the book, and she and a friend, while reading passages that made them laugh, began to point out to each other the “ridiculous one-liners” they found. I’ll let her tell you where it went from there:

So I typed up a list of the last line of every chapter in the book. And the amazing thing was that the story actually made sense this way. Lauren  [her friend, not me] pointed out that it's like that speed reading technique they teach you in high school, where you only read the first and last sentence of each paragraph and, supposedly, that gives you the gist of it. So this is like speed reading on speed.

Now, I am not claiming to have the World's Best Taste in literature. In fact, I'm pretty easy to please. I can usually find something redeeming about whatever it is I'm reading. I like Faulkner just as much as I like the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. In fact, I probably like the Sisterhood more, because I've actually read them all.

I'd also like to point out that I actually HAVE read a full James Patterson novel. A few of them, in fact . . . But then he started kidnapping every member of the Cross family. Bringing back serial killers from the dead. Chasing his hero with tigers AND vampires—in the same novel.

Then he began publishing every novel with another author, like he can't even be bothered to write his own books anymore. He has a new release nearly every month, and I have trouble trusting a writer who must spend like two weeks, max, working on a book.

The result of her experiment is hilarious. And actually makes, scarily enough, fairly good sense. It’s still a silly story, but at least a funny one. and it stirred me into wondering how this same experiment might work with classical literature. While the ridiculous factor would surely be nil because of the quality of the writing, would creating a story out of last lines reflect the quality of the original story? I say a resounding yes! But judge for yourself with these results, two short stories created solely of each chapter’s closing lines from what might well be termed the true Great American Novels. Bear in mind that I offer these with only the greatest of respect for John Steinbeck and F. Scott Fitzgerald whose works speak with passion and brilliance. There is no fun making here, just honor to two of the greatest writers who grace American literary history.

The men sat still—thinking—figuring.
Then the motor roared up and the gears clicked and the great red truck rolled heavily away.
His yellow toe nails slipped a fraction in the dust.
The two stood and stared at the little cluster of buildings.
And all of them stared after the tractor.
They were silent, and gradually the skittering life of the ground, of holes and burrows, of the brush, began again, the gophers moved, and the rabbits crept to green things, the mice scampered over clods, and the winged hunters moved soundlessly overhead.
Clean, runs good.
“Oh,” And Al was a little disappointed.
The dust hung in the air for a long time after the loaded cars had passed.
And the truck crawled slowly through the dust toward the highway and the west.
And on windy nights the doors banged, and the ragged curtains fluttered in the broken windows.
The people in flight from the terror behind—strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.
She stared into the sky and braced her body firmly against pain.
And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.
The cars whizzed viciously by on 66.
The road spread dimly under the weak lights of the car.
But along the highway the cars of the migrant people crawled out like bugs, and the narrow concrete miles stretched ahead.
And the truck rolled down the mountain into the great valley.
And there’s the end.
The dim lights felt along the broad black highway ahead.
And the anger began to ferment.
“. . . Tonight—we’ll have—somepin nice.”
The migrant people looked humbly for pleasure on the roads.
The men looked up at him, and down at the ground, and their feet moved restlessly and they shifted their weight from one leg to the other.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
The tinkle of moving water came from the streambed.
The ol’ woman’ll make some nice biscuits tonight, ef she ain’t too tired.
In the boxcars the families huddled together, listening to the pouring water on the roofs.
Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year.
She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.

When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.
Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for the four o’clock train.
Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known.
Her wan, scornful  mouth smiled, and so I drew her up again closer, this time to my face.
Then I went out of the room and down the marble steps into the rain, leaving them there together.
But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.
So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight—watching over nothing.
It was after we started with Gatsby toward the house that the gardener saw Wilson’s body a little way off in the grass, and the holocaust was complete.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.