Fiction Friday: Alternate Titles by Alex Snider

Don't you hate it when you pick up a book with a title like A Good Man is Hard to Find, thinking, "I know! Good men are totally hard to find! It's like this self-help book was written for me!", then you get home and start reading and, bam, it's not a self-help book at all! It's a story about a horrid family and their annoying grandma who get whacked by some escaped convict! Instead of feeling that there is still hope and you could still meet a good man, you feel a little sick to your stomach (in an awesome way, because Flannery O'Connor is the best ever!) and then you think, "boy, I sure wish all novels had titles which perfectly illustrated the content so that I may never be misled and confused again". Well, that would take a lot of the fun out of titles and really, you should read the synopsis next time but just for funsies I have made a list of novels with better titles stolen from other novels.

The left column is the original title, right is the new, more honest title.

Pet Sematary: The Sun Also Rises
Jaws: A Moveable Feast
Sleeping Beauty: One Hundred Years of Solitude
A Million Little Pieces: An Imaginary Life
Lolita: The Man Who Loved Children
Pride and Prejudice: A Good Man is Hard to Find
The Bell Jar: Shock Doctrine
The Adventures of Tarzan: Me Talk Pretty One Day
American Psycho: The Life of an Amorous Man
Frankenstein: Notes From a Cold Island
The Talented Mr. Ripley: Call Me By Your Name
Twelve Deeds of Heracles: In the Skin of a Lion
Moby Dick: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Catch-22: Desperate Characters
Anna Karenina: End of the Affair
The Emperor's New Clothes: Transparent Things
Logan's Run: No Country For Old Men
The Great Gatsby: The Wild Party
Casper the Friendly Ghost: Unbearable Lightness of Being
Ironweed: Grapes of Wrath

Any others? Add in the comments!

Happy Friday!



Photo: The cover of Marvel Comics' Pride & Prejudice #1

Alex Snider is a Toronto-based writer and the co-creator of the Once Again, To Zelda blog, which is where a version of this post originally appeared. You can read the rest of her posts here.