The College Fix

Thanks go out to the National Association of Scholars, who gave us a great week of chuckles through its trigger warning writing contest.

Today it announced the winners and honorable mentions of that endeavor, sifting through 224 submissions from 128 participants for 153 different books to find these gems, with NAS president Peter Wood personally selected the top three:

Lolita: Disturbing novel. Narrator DOES NOT RECYCLE.
By Earl V. Bobb (submitted by email)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: Warning: May Contain Nuts
By Greg Britton @gmbritton

Green Eggs and Ham: Glorifies GMOs.
By Jim Eltringham @jimeltringham

Honorable mentions include:

Les Miserables: may cause paranoia in students with a history of shoplifting, especially food items.
By Robert Woolley @RandomlyBob

Goldilocks: Warning: bears!
By Adam Kissel @AdamKissel

Cask of Amontillado: Abject insensitivity to the difficulties involved in brick-laying.
By Mark Myers @knowtheparallax

The NAS staff also wrote some trigger warnings:

Don Quixote: scenes of graphic violence against alternative energy sources.
Anna Karenina: revolt against patriarchy ends badly.
Beowulf: depictions of violence against endangered species.
Treasure Island: offensive portrayals of transnational nautical entrepreneurs.
Confessions of St. Augustine: narrow-minded treatment of Carthinoginian hook-up culture.

Even The College Fix’s Jenn Kabbany threw her hat into the ring. It didn’t make the cut, but we still think it was pretty darn clever:

@NASorg Charlotte’s Web: Warning – female dies of natural causes. #TriggerWarningFail

— Jennifer Kabbany (@JenniferKabbany) June 2, 2014

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IMAGE: Liz West/Flickr