I Was a Regency Zombie
By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
These days, America is menaced by zombie banks and
zombie computers. What’s next, a zombie Jane Austen?
In fact, yes. Minor pandemonium ensued in the
blogosphere this month after Quirk Books announced the publication of “Pride
and Prejudice and Zombies,” an edition of Austen’s classic juiced up with
“all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem” by a Los Angeles television
writer named Seth Grahame-Smith. (First line: “It is a truth universally
acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more
brains.”)
Then, last week, the monster alert at Meryton went
from orange to red when it was reported that Elton John’s
Rocket Pictures was developing a project called “Pride and Predator,” in which
the giant alien from the 1987 cult classic pays a call on the Bennet family.
Holy Northanger Abbey! Is this some mutant
experiment in intellectual property law escaped from the lab? Proof of the
essentially vampiric nature of today’s culture industry? Or an attempt to make
Austen safe for audiences — read “boys” — raised on “Mortal Kombat” and “Evil
Dead”?
According to Mr. Grahame-Smith, who confessed to
being “bored to tears” by “Pride and Prejudice” in high school, the idea was
mostly to sell resistant readers on the joys of Jane while having a bit of fun.
The book, probably the first Austen/horror mashup to make it into print, is
roughly 85 percent Austen’s original text, with references to monsters,
putrefying flesh and ninja swordplay added on just about every page.
“I think Austen would have a sense of humor about
it,” said Mr. Grahame-Smith, whose previous books include “How to Survive a
Horror Movie.” (Rule No. 1 in a zombie attack: “Stop Being So Pathetic.”)
“Or maybe she’s rolling in her grave. Or climbing out of it.”
But not everyone in the Austen world relishes the
idea of Elizabeth Bennet, action hero. Myretta Robens, site manager and
co-founder of the Austen fan site Republic of Pemberley, pemberley.com, (and herself the author of two Regency
romance novels), said she was cautiously pessimistic about the forthcoming
zombie invasion.
“I’m interested in anything relating to Jane,” she
said. “But to me this is like Jane Austen jumping the shark.”
To some scholars, however, it’s a short leap from
verbal sparring to real swordplay. “It makes sense to give Lizzie a grander
scope for her action,” said Deidre Lynch, an associate professor of English at
the University of Toronto and editor of “Janeites,” a collection of scholarly
essays about Austen devotees. “It goes with the muddy petticoats and the
rambling across the countryside in this unladylike way. The next step is ninja
training.”
In fact, “Pride and Prejudice” may already be a
zombie novel, contends Brad Pasanek, a specialist in 18th-century literature at
the University of Virginia.
“The characters other than the protagonist are so
often surrounded by people who aren’t fully human, like machines that keep
repeating the same things over and over again,” Professor Pasanek said. “All
those characters shuffling in and out of scenes, always frustrating the
protagonists. It’s a crowded but eerie landscape. What’s wrong with those
people? They don’t dance well but move in jerky fits. Oh, they are headed this
way!”
While the vast industry of Austen sequels and
pastiches runs heavily toward the romance-novel end of the literary spectrum —
see “The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy” by Maya Slater, to be published in the
United States in June — scholars have long emphasized the mean-girl side of
Jane’s personality. Professor Pasanek, who has collaborated on a project that
uses spam-detection software to analyze Austen fan fiction, cites the
psychologist D. W. Harding’s 1940 essay “Regulated Hatred,” which sounds
more like a death-metal band than a piece of influential Austen scholarship.
“Most people try to ignore the fact that Austen’s
novels are sort of acid baths,” Professor Pasanek said. “She’s so much better,
deeper, more sensitive and intelligent than everyone around her that she has to
regulate her own misanthropy. Her novels are hostile environments.”
Despite her own reservations, Ms. Robens
acknowledged that Austen would probably be “laughing her head off” at the new
mashups.
Or maybe plotting delicious revenge. Next year,
Ballantine Books will publish Michael Thomas Ford’s novel “Jane Bites Back,” in
which Austen turns into a vampire, fakes her own death and lives quietly as a
bookstore owner before finally driving a stake through the heart of everyone
who has been making money off her for the last two centuries.
“She’s a woman who has been middle-aged for 200
years and is fed up,” Mr. Ford said. “She finally gets to restart her life and
reclaim her literary fame.”
The undead Austen also settle scores with some old
literary rivals, though Mr. Ford declined to name names. Another mashup in the
making?
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