Just as I am preparing to read my copy of A True Novel, Japanese novelist, Minae Mizumura's exquisitely bound two volume rendition of Emily Bronte's 18th century classic, Wuthering Heights, I come across Thug-Notes.
What do I see? A gangsta rap version of the novel by Sparky Sweets, PhD, a.k.a. comedian Greg Edwards.
Incongruity is a versatile tool, especially effective in teaching the classics to those who are too lazy to imbibe them first-hand. But the application of street sensibility to high culture, an innovative approach, merely makes high culture approachable without making it take you back in time and open doors to history.
It's impossible to know why the stuff that happens in Wuthering Heights happens without the historical context of the novel. After all, unlike what Dr. Sparky Sweets says, Heathcliff isn't just another gangsta.
Anyhow, Dr. Sparky Sweet's classics are awful; they're all right as short videos, a form that dominates the land of the Internet these days and masquerade as teaching "tools".
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