In Which I Start a Meme

February 9, 2009

I was working on an upcoming script today, and thought it would be funny if people were writing novels on Twitter… so I started coming up with Twitter versions of classic novels. For example, The Grapes of Wrath:

Times are hard. Sister breast feeding homeless guy. I am so outta here.

And then I said to myself, hey, why not go to my own site on Twitter, and ask other people to contribute their ideas. And Twitter, shall we say, responded. Results are here.

8 Responses to In Which I Start a Meme

  1. Tara February 9, 2009 at 9:47 pm #

    Hoping my degree in American Literature and Culture pays off! Hearing one of my twitternovels on the show would be better than having Carl Kasell’s voice on my voicemail.

    This is all I want for Valentine’s Day!

  2. tim February 10, 2009 at 7:57 am #

    I am assiduously avoiding Twitter, so here’s mine:

    To Kill A Mockingbird: Mom’s dead, Dad’s a lawyer, defending a black man. Weird neighbor dude (and ham hock costume) save my life.

  3. lovebabz February 10, 2009 at 9:02 am #

    Way COOL! I am going to attempt to add my voice…tweet to this!

  4. Jessica February 10, 2009 at 2:05 pm #

    I submitted four; great fun fitting everything in 115 spaces (140 minus the hash-tag and @petersagal). You were right with one of your twitter responses – the tweets didn’t necessarily summarize the story, but rather recaptured a feeling.

    Maybe we’ll hear some of these on an upcoming episode of WWDTM? I’d be curious to see them organized by book; compare what everyone thought about Catcher in the Rye, etc.

  5. madbard February 11, 2009 at 4:44 pm #

    Lolita: OMG! Crpy old guy hitting on me!

  6. Anna February 12, 2009 at 12:40 am #

    Hamlet: Totally bumped off Polonius today – sucks. O. and L. will freak! Be in England for a while – when I get back, Claudius is going down.

    Midsummer Night’s Dream: Rehearsals going well for play. Got the part of the Wall – awesome! But Bottom’s acting like a complete ass.

  7. Leanne February 24, 2009 at 1:07 pm #

    You have successfully created a Twitter phenomenon. Oh, if only I was that talented.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Shakespeare on Twitter | times.momentinet.net - February 16, 2009

    [...] here at CNET News (I’m talking to you, Jim Kerstetter) are having great fun with NPR host Peter Sagal’s idea of coming up with Twitter versions of classic novels, like the summation above, which Sagal [...]