The Book Standard website reports that Dot Mobile, which offers mobile-phone services to all students in universities in the U.K., plans to launch a program in January in which students are sent text messages of abbreviated summaries and first lines of literary classics for £20 a month.
Professor John Sutherland of University College London, who helped develop the program, doffed the white gloves to defend it against literary purists. “Whilst some may argue that [Charles] Dickens is really too big a morsel to be swallowed by text, the ‘Great Inimitable’ himself began working life as a shorthand writer,” he said in a press release. “He would, I suspect, have approved of the brevity if nothing else.”
Think you’re so smart? Identify the novel that opens with the following:
IfURlyWnt2HrBoutIt,Da1stFingUlProbWnt2NoIsWherIWsBorn&
WotMyLousyChldhdWsLyk&HwMyRentsWerOcupyd&AlB4TheyHdMe
&AlThtDaveCopafieldKindaCrp,BtIDnFeelLykGoinIntaItIfUWannaNoDaTruf
[Answer: J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye]
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