Great Books of the 20th Century, as Reviewed by My Boss

On the Road by Jack Kerouac—"Seems forced."

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth—"Nobody’s going to read all of that."

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway—"This feels like Macy’s to me."

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf—"It needs to be like New York. It needs to have that energy."

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison—"This isn’t like what we talked about."

Ulysses by James Joyce—"That’s a lot of copy."

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald—"It’s a step in the right direction, but it needs to say ‘sexy’ or ‘new.’"

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov—"There’s no way it can be that long."

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow—"It’s not about what the words are, it’s about the type treatment and the images."

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner—"This needs to be about half as long."