Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

[perfectscorn]

Because you’re all just dying to know about it. (Heh-heh

Comments

[the_priculici]

While I do agree with your assertion that Jane Austen was obviously the better example of a writer here, I think you may have missed the point of the book. Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies is written specifically for those people who find reading about interactions between people dreadfully boring. It's intended to insert a bit of bad primetime television into the story. If you could read Pride and Prejudice and actually say you liked it, you are not the target audience for this book. (I have actually never managed to make it through a reading or even a screening of the movie.) Pop Culture America demands that all problems be solved with simple, overwhelming force. If a tree stands in the way of what you want, don't work your way around it, grab a chain saw and cut it down. This culture doesn't jive with what Jane was trying to create. As such the work is undervalued in modern entertainment. I think the author was hoping that by presenting you with these modern tropes to keep interest from waning, he could get people to read

[perfectscorn]

I can see this as a motive for writing the book, but I still don't think it was done well. Or at least, not as well as it could have been done. For me, it all comes down to respecting the original work. It's entirely possible to rewrite a book, even when the rewrite involves zombies, and still preserve the basic themes of the original. Or, if you change parts of those themes, you do it very deliberately, in order to make a particular point. And maybe you could argue that zombie mayhem IS the point here, but it's possible to add that in ways that keep the original characters intact and don't completely ignore what Jane Austen was trying to say about human compassion, integrity, and judgment. You can have straightforward zombie fight scenes AND a good story. Even a good satiric story. It would take more work to write, yes, but surely it would be worth it? That would be a much better way to get people to read Austen's work. I'm just not convinced that this particular writer actually cared

[deceptivemirror]

I thought it hilarious myself BECAUSE so many of the things that made P&P great are missing or changed in this one to make it into something the person without literary taste can read. That's what kept me chuckling through each page!

However, it's definitely NOT a great book. It's something you read when you don't want to think and wish to be entertained at the same time.

[perfectscorn]

Hmm, maybe the problem is that I can't turn off my literary taste buds. (Although I can apparently make bad metaphors.) Or maybe the problem is that I just don't like zombies all that much, since I've definitely enjoyed some pretty lowbrow literature before. I don't dislike zombies, and in theory I think that Pride and Prejudice + zombies should be brilliant, but I don't like zombies enough to cancel out all the other parts that annoyed me.

[deceptivemirror]

And that makes sense. It's a funny parody, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a very bad parody. You don't have to turn off your literary taste buds. It's just a book that happens to have made a silly hash of a classic.

...having said that, please forgive me for looking forward to Sense, Sensibility, and Sea Monsters. I have yet to read the accurate, Jane Austen-written version. Hopefully I will do that before I get that other book.

[perfectscorn]

It's a pity really, because I'm completely in favor of good parodies. I wish this had been one.

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters? Seriously? *Checks Amazon* Wow, I had no idea this even existed. It's actually tempting (I'm much more interested in sea monsters than in zombies), but I haven't read the original either, and I don't think I'll bother unless someone tells me it's worth reading. I hope you enjoy it, though.

[captain_ethel]

I loved the flavor of your response Marta, and I think you should start a book column in some paper. You also have excellent taste - Mary Sues, and also zombies, are among the STUPIDEST things to add to P&P to try to "improve" it.

[perfectscorn]

I actually think the addition of zombies to Pride and Prejudice could have, if not improved it, at least made a good parody. Unfortunately, this particular parody was not good. Mary Sues improve nothing whatsoever.