Romeo, Romeo — wher4 Rt thou Romeo?

I find it ironic that the day following the news about Seattle being the most literate city in the U.S. I came across a story about Dot Mobile, a British mobile phone service aimed at students, which will begin distributing literature’s greatest classics in text message format this January.

(Groan!)

Are the hallowed halls of literature no longer immune from the soulless, ravening hordes of children raised on AOL spelling?

If Dot Mobile gets their way, Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” will become “2b? Nt2b? ???” And John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, would begin, “devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war.” (The devil is kicked out of heaven because he is jealous of Jesus and starts a war.)

The company claims the service will be a valuable resource for studying for exams and will finally break through to a generation otherwise uninterested in the subtle rewards of reading.

Humbug! It’s a travesty, plain and simple!

Text messaging will eliminate all that makes literature great – imagery, irony, nuance, layers of complexity. How could the compressed climax of Jane Eyre, for example – “MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus” (Mad wife sets fire to house) – truly do the story justice?

It will also discourage students from reading the books, to settle for something else. And when was the last time people needed excuses not to read books?

Arrrgh!

I’ll be boiling up some pitch, and whoever came up with the idea had better hope I never find them. 

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