James Thurber 的书, 全名叫 Fables of Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated 不是 novel, 但是属於 fiction 的范围. 里面改写了很 多寓言故事, 把它们变得很爆笑. 每篇结尾还有作者自己 写的 "morals", 更是令人莞尔. 故事都很短, 用字浅显 易懂. 虽然说改的是童话寓言, 但在看似恶搞的背後, 其 实也颇发人深省. 以下举一篇为例, 看了便知其妙处. The Little Girl and the Wolf One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood. When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead. Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be. --

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