I came across a telling sign of the times.

You know how students have long turned to CliffsNotes pamphlets as a way around reading the whole book?

Things have changed.

In this time of texting, IMing and e-mail, CliffsNotes are too long.

To solve this, Penguin books has signed a pair of University of Chicago freshmen to “rewrite” 75 classic novels in Twitter posts, or “tweets” as they are called.

If you don’t know about Twitter, it’s how everyone from celebrities to The New York Times sends out short dispatches about the latest news.

For example, a few days ago, Ashton Kutcher typed the phrase, “Looking for something white to wear,” and it instantly went out to 2 million people who like to keep up with his daily minutiae.

The main rule of Twitter, which is why it’s so popular, is that no dispatch can be more than 140 characters. I don’t know how they settled on that, but it has proven the perfect length. We’re in an age when even a paragraph can be considered too long. Twitter’s philosophy is that everything can be boiled down to a line and a half.

That’s what these U of C freshmen are now going to do with novels.

As someone whose business is “boiling it down,” I thought I’d help them out with a few of my own Twitter versions — strictly under 140 characters — of well-known books.

My offerings:

Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville: Peg-leg sea captain chases metaphorical white whale with bad result.

War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy: A sweeping saga of so many unpronounceable Russian names most students write essays on the first few chapters.

Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky: See above Tweet.

Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger: Holden flunks out of Pencey Prep, which is fine and all because it’s full of phonies, and if u can’t relate, u’ve never been a teenager.

Ulysses, by James Joyce: And I asked the professor with my eyes 2 not make me read it, but yes, he said, yes u must, yes, as well u as the rest of my students . . .

The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway: It was getting dark. The fish had been eaten by the sharks. The old man spat at them, thinking of the great DiMaggio.

Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain: Ain’t a real American male if u don’t fetch a Kleenex crying at the thought of being sivilized by Aunt Polly or the Widow Douglas.

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Clearly never read by the Bernie Madoffs and sub-prime kings who might have learned the blind pursuit of wealth ends tragically.

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath: There are few things more inspiring to a Northampton-area coed than an angst-filled woman author who succumbs to her own inner demons.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence: Do u believe we get 2 read sex scenes in college and call it literature? And who knew they even had sex in 1928?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey. A fierce, defiant personality beats “The Man” every time, except for the part where (spoiler alert) they lobotomize you in the end.

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck: The dust came, ruining the land, but by staying a family, and proud, with Ma’s terrible strength their guide, they would survive.

Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller: Attention must be paid to the everyman, because who doesn’t yearn for more, and how did Miller get to marry Marilyn Monroe, anyway?

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding: If you thought high school girls were mean, check out what boys do when unsupervised.

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams: As good as Williams was at writing plays, Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski was better at wearing T-shirts.

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens: It was the best of books, it was also the longest of books because Dickens was paid by the word.

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad: The horror, the horror that still more students will say it’s a metaphor of the hard journey 2 discover the savage nature of our own souls.

Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce: Can we all just agree that Joyce was smoking something when he wrote this one, tho it’s cool the last sentence ends where the first begins.

And finally:

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen: Despite the 1st line, it is NOT a truth that a single man with a good fortune must be in want of a wife, it’s women who are in want of him.

I think that covers it. If Penguin is interested, I would be willing to contribute these for only 30 percent of the book’s advance.

Please send the contract to my home, and given what the times have done to my attention span, keep it to a line and a half.

mpatinkin@projo.com