Medea says ‘hiiiiiiii’ on the first page of Mallory Ortberg’s hilarious book, which puts smartphones in the hands of literary heroes, heroines and their writers; ‘it’s Glauce right??’, Medea continues, squealing ‘when is the WEDDING/ I hope you guys have the Argonauts as groomsmen/ and they do the sword thing/ you know where they make the little roof with their swords/ and you run down underneath it’.
From this startling opening, Ortberg romps through the canon. Hamlet has teenage tantrums about the sandwiches his mother brings up on a tray. Keats gushes about ‘THIS URN’ and Mrs Danvers upbraids Rebecca for bringing in ‘BAGGED tea?/ this is a stately home/ like OF ENGLAND/ this house has an actual name/ you don’t even have a name’.
As co-founder of the online magazine The Toast, Ortberg has made a speciality out of deliciously wicked writing, such as her series Women in Western Art History (where she wonders what the dead-eyed nudes are really thinking), her Male Novelist Jokes (dismantling the pretensions of both the novelists and the literary establishment) and her Literary Trysts It Gives Me Great Joy to Think About (such as Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman).
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