Five Minute Iliad

From the author of "A Prairie Home Companion's" beloved "Five-Minute Classics" comes a witty and profane send-up of the Western literary canon--aka the "Spinal Tap" of literature. Includes 15 parodies that provide a riotous romp from Homer to Kerouac, from Ancient Greece to Postwar America. 16 illustrations.

Was Homer really blind, or was that just his shtick? Was Dante a righty or a lefty? Why aren't there any pictures of Jane Austen in a bikini? What made Oscar so Wilde? How much did Hemingway? These are just some of the many great questions of Western literature ignored in this book.

From the author of "A Prairie Home Companion"'s beloved "Five-Minute Classics" comes "The Five-Minute Iliad and Other Instant Classics," a witty and profane lampoon of the Western literary canon -- the "Spinal Tap" of literature.

"I will never write such wordy trash again," Leo Tolstoy said of "War and Peace" after reading Homer in the original Greek. Tolstoy's pledge inspired humorist Greg Nagan to whet his double-edged verbal sword and offer this gleefully twisted take on what contemporary readings of the Great Books say about our society today.

From "The Iliad" to "On the Road," these fifteen parodies provide a riotous romp through Western civilization (one version of it, anyway) from Homer to Kerouac, from Ancient Greece to Postwar America, from the Lyrical Epic to the Breathless Gush. Nagan's mirthful mayhem will delight those who've read the Great Books, and those who haven't read them will find these literary caricatures entertaining in their own right.