A simple plan to make literature more relevant in the marketplace of ideas by maximizing revenue potential.

Over the course of human history, great works of literature have generated less revenue in aggregate than a single day’s worth of Starbucks sales.

Why is literature losing out so badly to the coffee mongers? That they sell a drug, legally, we rejected as too simplistic; many retailers of drugs legal and illegal don’t get wealthy. We attempted to answer this question by visiting a local Starbucks. The answer is shockingly obvious if you have eyes to see. Just look around. Everything is for sale. Little racks with branded items pop up like toadstools. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does Starbucks—every empty space is filled with something you could buy. So, we have initiated a project to go back and apply what we’ve learned to great works of literature in hopes of raising greater revenues.

 

WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau and The Stoneslide Corrective

Walden; or, Life in the Woods is such an influential text in both American literature and political thought that we fear to change a single word. Nonetheless, even such a classic can be enhanced with appropriate instances of commercial expression. What could be more American?

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my good readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent.

 

 

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT
by Dylan Thomas and The Stoneslide Corrective

Sitting at his dying father’s bedside, Dylan Thomas was struck by the irony and horror of death, love, and the end of human understanding. He should have noticed that even in the last breath there are sponsorship opportunities.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Duracell and Maglite should illuminate
You. Besides, old age can burn without Gold Bond Medicated Powder,
And then there’s a ton of  rage at close of day;
Rage, rage, rage, the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no Lightning Source, they
Clench a 320 lumens MAG-TAC with green hands and
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced during a Lambeau Leap in Green Bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Read other works we have rebranded and improved.