A special post from Mandy J Watson
He then asked her to walk into the house—but she declared herself not tired, and they stood together on the lawn. At such a time much might have been said, but nothing was. Elisabeth and Darcy merely looked at one another in awkward silence, until the latter reached both arms around her. She was frozen—”What does he mean to do?” she thought. But his intentions were respectable, for Darcy merely meant to retrieve his Brown Bess, which Elizabeth had affixed to her back during her walk. She remembered the lead ammunition in her pocket and offered it to him. “Your balls, Mr. Darcy?” He reached out and closed her hand around them, and offered, “They belong to you, Miss Bennet.”
– Excerpt from Pride And Prejudice And Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance—Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem, Chapter 43, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
As in the original, there is much talk of balls in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, the smash-hit reworking (often erroneously described as a “mashup”) of the classic Jane Austen novel, but in the 2009 version they are occasionally infused with more subtext. The novel caused quite a commotion upon its release earlier this year as it shot to the top of a number of best-selling lists. Meanwhile, half the literary world was facepalming itself at having not thought of the brilliant idea of reworking classics in the public domain first and the other half was crying “Blasphemy!” (The book made Time magazine’s The Five Worst Inventions Of 2009 list “The Jane Austen Monster Mashup Novel: it started with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Please let it end soon.”)
There is an art to the practice of reworking a classic and utilising its public-domain characters in one’s own work, however. The possibilities are endless but so are the pitfalls, as can be seen by the number of lacklustre pretenders (many featuring zombies, of course), often shot down by scathing reviews, that were subsequently quickly released by other publishers and are now floating around on Amazon.com. Examples include The War Of The Worlds Plus Blood, Guts And Zombies, Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn And Zombie Jim: Mark Twain’s Classic With Crazy Zombie Goodness (so far very well received by three reviewers of no standing), a Pride And Prejudice sequel Mr Darcy, Vampyre (sample review), and Vampire Darcy’s Desire: A Pride And Prejudice Adaptation (sample review).
Inserting supernatural references into a classic in such a way as to remain faithful to the original text and its intentions, but still achieve a new story that is fascinating and interesting enough to hook readers, takes talent. I certainly enjoyed Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. I’ve never felt the urge to read the original, though I did download the text so that I could compare it to the new version, but I have seen the various film and television productions that have cropped up over the years and, while I have enjoyed them, I am quite certain that I would have struggled to enjoy the book. However, the addition to the storyline of the unmentionable scourge and the Bennet sisters’ expert training in the dark arts, completed over a number of years in China, made the story infinitely more entertaining to me.
I was able to grasp the gist of the original work (as most of it is left unchanged) but the addition of the new material spoke directly to my sensibilities and made the original text far more palatable to me. In places it is very amusing, not only due to the almost anachronistic contrast between the added distraction of the sisters’ zombie slaying in service to His Majesty peppering their attempts to navigate a complicated, restained society and meet potential husband material of suitable standing, but also because Seth Grahame-Smith has a way of inserting, at times, a handful of extra words into a paragraph that are unexpected and absolutely hilarious. So, too, are certain turns of phrases emulating 19th-century diction, such as “exercise moisture” (although I must hasten to add that the word “manky” appears on page 72). There is also the occasional allusion to amusing indiscretions that Jane Austen most certainly did not write about in her original draft. Additionally, the story still being set in the same polite, constrained, gossip-mongering society as the original, the sisters face even more societal pitfalls in that they have to juggle, or try to reconcile, being respected, though unbecoming, masters of the dark arts adhering faithfully to the warrior code and partaking in vapid, husband-seeking inanity. At one point it is even remarked that it is impossible to be, and do, both.
The scourge is also always mentioned and described in a very nonchalant, disconnected manner that mirrors the attitudes and behaviours of the 19th-century society but is rather disconcerting to 21st-century readers used to adrenalin-fuelled gratuitous murder and mayhem.
Another surprise was the welcome addition of full-page illustrations, by Philip Smiley. Each illustration relates to one of the new pieces of text so there are many instances of zombie slaying and zombies feasting, as well as the immortalisation of a game of Kiss Me Deer, which the sisters are fond of playing to hone their skills (it requires stalking a deer, wrestling it to the ground, and kissing it lightly on the nose before releasing it).
The book concludes like a student’s handbook with a reader discussion guide of questions to ponder. Samples include:
5. Due to her fierce independence, devotion to exercise, and penchant for boots, some critics have called Elizabeth Bennet “the first literary lesbian.” Do you think the authors intended her to be gay? And, if so, how would this Sapphic twist serve to explain her relationships with Darcy, Jane, Charlotte, Lady Catherine, and Wickham?
6. Some critics have suggested that the zombies represent the authors’ views toward marriage—an endless curse that sucks the life out of you and just won’t die. Do you agree, or do you have another opinion about the symbolism of the unmentionables?
7. Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?
My only complaints regarding the book are: in places the additional text gives itself away in a sometimes jarring manner: the copy editing process was not very good and relies on American punctuation conventions; and the use of both “judgment” (additional text) versus “judgement” (original text), among other issues, can’t help but be noticed.
That aside, Pride And Prejudice And Zombies has been a triumph, so much so that the publishing company responsible for it, Quirk Classics, commissioned a different author, Ben H Winters, to rework Sense And Sensibility (remaining with the Jane Austen theme that has served it so well) and a prequel to Pride And Prejudice And Zombies (“Pride And Prejudice And Zombies: Dawn Of The Dreadfuls” by Steve Hockensmith) has subsequently been announced, which, presumably, will be an original work.
Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters, a collaboration by Jane Austen and Ben H Winters, debuted at the end of September 2009, complete with an amusing trailer to whet your appetite. It has also garnered fabourable reviews and I am looking forward to reading it. Winters wrote a piece for Slate magazine detailing the experience and the constraints and framework in which he had to operate, as well as how it differed from Pride And Prejudice And Zombies. He also provided some insight into the challenge of creating the appropriate 19th-century diction for 21st-century terminologies, which happily appears to be as prevalent as it is in Pride And Prejudice And Zombies.
An excerpt from his article:
One of the most consistent creative challenges of writing the book was on the basic level of vocabulary. For the conceit to work, the new material would need to sound as much like Austen’s marvelous and precise early-19th century diction as possible. So how to find the right vocab words to describe stuff that Austen never would have described in a million years? I borrowed a lot from my sources. From Verne, I got great fish-describing words like cartilaginous and bioluminescence. From Stevenson, great deserted-island words like miry and marish, not to mention nautical words like cockleshell and flying jib. I also turned frequently to the thesaurus. Poring through my Roget’s, I arrived at the appropriately eloquent and disgusting phrase to describe the slimy stomach of an oversize hermit crab just before it smothers someone to death: mucocutaneous undercarriage.
Watch the trailer:
One can only wonder what will be next and whether Quirk Classics can continue to dominate the market with quality releases or if this is, as many hope, but a passing fad.
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