'A' for effort, 'X' for brief nudity and dead priest jokes

From the Evansville Courier & Press and The Meade County Messenger

English teachers rejoice: the oldest known copy of “The Scarlet Letter” was auctioned last month for $545,100, a record for an American book that old.

The story is classic, one of these works that broadens your horizons, touches your soul and gives you that climb-the-rope-in-gym-class feeling, much like the Cronin classic “Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type.”

But like the book’s main character, the “Scarlet Letter” has a dirty little secret: It’s boring as an Amish city council meeting.

I know what you’re thinking: “Who does this guy think he is? I haven’t seen you write an American classic, Big Shot.”

Fair enough. But hear me out: The storyline rocks, according to a note from my friend Cliff. It’s about a 1666 Massachusetts woman, Demi Moore, who gets knocked up by a minister after her husband is lost at sea. It gets harder and harder to hide the affair when her weight balloons, especially since everyone in the village knows single women try to stay at their dating weights.
To punish her for her adultery, they make her wear a scarlet A, like Alvin from the Chipmunks, who was also a notorious freak. The minister kicks over. Sex, British accents, dead cheating clergymen?

Sounds scintillating, right?

Yeah, if Nathaniel Hawthorne could write his way out of a wet paper bag (unlike me, who only used the “wet paper bag” cliché to demonstrate bad writing). Check out this page-turning opening: “It is a little remarkable, that though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.”

Or this ending, when the adulteress reflects on her misdeeds: “Dear Penthouse, I met this guy who’s tall, handsome and holy, at least before he feared being busted and his face grew busted.”

But as bad as that writing is, it sure can’t compare to good ol’ English lit. In college I read the first 50 pages of “Beowulf,” still didn’t know what the heck was going on, put the book down and dropped the class.

But an American book dealer paid more than half a million for a proof copy of the book, which on its pages had more than 700 notes and corrections, some by Nasty Nate himself (“Use the phrase ‘that though disinclined’” and “This sentence needs to be longer”).

The copy was so sought after that it sat in a drawer for 118 years, much like the copy I bought for my English class.

And for all that hard work, it’s only fitting my literature teacher gave me my own Scarlet Letter: F.

Columnist Jacob Bennett is a no-good, heartbreaker, a liar and a cheat. You don't know why you let him do those things to you. Your friends keep emailing him at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com to say he ain't no good, whoa-oh-oh, you'd leave him if you could. But you're on tight, stuck like glue. You ain't never, you ain't never, you ain't never no no, loved a man the way you love him.