I discovered I had a talent for summarizing the main action of novels, even quite complex novels, in 3 to 4 paragraphs when I decided to do a fanzine on Georgette Heyer and the Brontes one year. I knew I had to remind the readers of what the plots were or they wouldn't appreciate the reasons I so loved the Bronte novels. I set out to briefly summarize Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. It was incredibly difficult to do well. Maybe you wouldn't have as many problems, but I think I'm pretty good at writing papers on novels, and deconstruction, and getting to the heart of the matter, and I was going nuts as I slogged through it! I'm going to share it with you, too. Herewith, my version of Wuthering Heights.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by Emily Bronte (published 1847)

Mr Lockwood, a offensively inept city slicker, rents Thrushcross Grange in the Yorkshire moors. His landlord, Heathcliff, is a foul-tempered brute as is the manservant Joseph. In an ill-advised fit of sociability, Lockwood comes visiting to Heathcliff's house, Wuthering Heights, in a snowstorm and is baffled by the sullen hostility of the household. He is taken upstairs to spend the night and is given a chamber where he finds a diary of someone named Catherine Earnshaw. Naturally, he reads it, being that sort of person. He falls asleep and has a dreadful dream about the dead Catherine wailing and scrabbling at his window to come in. He rubs her ice-cold arm across a broken pane until the bedclothes are soaked with blood in one of the most horrifically memorable scenes in English literature.

Back at the Grange, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him about Catherine. She tells him about the gypsy boy Mr Earnshaw brought home one year. In her version, Catherine and Heathcliff grow up wild and inseparable. After Mr Earnshaw dies, Catherine's older brother Hindley becomes tyrannical and forces Heathcliff to forego education and do hard labor on the farm. One night Catherine and Heathcliff sneak over to Thrushcross Grange to spy on the Linton family and Catherine is mauled by the Linton's bulldog while trying to escape. She stays with Isabella and Edgar, the young Lintons, five weeks while recovering and learns to be a young lady in doing so. The difference between Edgar and Heathcliff's position becomes clear. Catherine explains to Nelly that she has decided to marry Edgar because marrying Heathcliff would degrade her but that she is his twin soul and the only way they can both survive is if she marries money and social standing. Heathcliff hears only the first half of the conversation and runs away.

Three years later Heathcliff comes back, with great though unexplained wealth and a gentleman's veneer. He moves in with Hindley who has turned to drinking and gambling. Catherine has married Edgar and is expecting a child. Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton, then abuses her. He encourages Hindley's gambling and gains title to the house. He makes sure Hindley's son Hareton Earnshaw is as miserable a brute as he himself was. Catherine pines away from pure willfulness. She dies giving birth to Cathy Linton. Isabella runs away and gives birth to Linton Heathcliff. Heathcliff inherits Thrushcross Grange through his son who is sickly and selfish. Heathcliff manipulates Cathy into marrying Linton. Linton dies. Cathy and Hareton civilize each other. Lockwood returns the following year and learns of Heathcliff's death. Heathcliff had become all that he despised in order to revenge himself. He starved himself to death, pining to be with Catherine.

Thank you, thank you. Now, mind you, that summarization leaves out the incredible visceral weirdness of the novel, the fact that both narrators (Nelly and Lockwood) are completely unreliable witnesses, and the thrilling Romanticism that seeps out like a cold mist as you read. If you haven't read it, may I recommend it to you? And if you haven't got the time, at least now you'll be able to fake your way through a cocktail party conversation if the genius of the Brontes comes up as a topic of discussion.

So, who's written "Proust in 3 to 4 Paragraphs?" I still haven't read him, yet.