Ladies and Gentlemen,

Seven Trumpets,

The sound of thunder.

Seven Trumpets,

The threatening anger.

Seven Trumpets,

The trembling voice.

Seven Trumpets,

You’ve got no choice.

Seven Trumpets,

The Seven Angels.

Seven Trumpets,

The music… changes!

Via the ever amusing Bookslut, here’s an interesting article about the booming sales at Barnes & Noble for their line of simplified classics, using simpler words and sentence structures.

I love Ms. Crispin’s remarks about this booming trend: “Wouldn’t you love to have that job? ‘So, what do you do for a living?’ ‘I dumb down the world’s classic literature for the young and the stupid.'”

I am all for making the classics available, but at what point does all this tinkering manifestly change The Adventures of Tom Sawyer into something else? I find this troubling. Our cultural history is already under siege from the rapacious vacuity of television, must literature be watered down as well?