As a literature professor, I just hate CliffsNotes and their ilk. Reading isolated facts about a book is not the same thing as reading a book. I consider using CliffsNotes instead of reading the assignment as cheating. But now CliffsNotes are evidently considered too long for today’s students to handle.
According to various news reports, that company is now producing brief internet videos of its famous crib notes which will be shown initially on AOL, since “everything in today’s world seems to be headed towards speedier and shorter ways to get information.”
Twain and Dickens are information you see; not art. . . .
Anyway, these new “study aides” won’t be dry, talking-head videos either; no sir. They will be “humorous shorts.” And not just humorous, but “irreverent,” too. Yet CliffsNotes says these humorous, irreverent shorts will “still manage to present the plot, characters, and themes” of the assignments — I mean books. . . .
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