Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Recently, I was given a copy of the infamous 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,' (hereinafter 'PPZ') and I'm most of the way through it, which is probably the reason for my recent zombie comments. For those who have never heard of the book (PPZ), it's a revision of the classic Jane Austen novel, with added fight scenes and plot-line based on a nationwide zombie-uprising in 18th century England. It is essentially the same story Austen wrote, with the same female lead and her four sisters (and other family) pursing love in rural England. Except material has been added and changed, to reflect the aforementioned story-line of an ongoing zombie apocalypse surrounding the same central plot events written by Austen. Notably, Liz and her sisters are all Shaolin-trained (think Kane from Kung Fu) zombie hunters.

I read 'Pride and Prejudice' (and some other Jane Austen stuff) back in the dark drunk days in Davis, and suffice to say that I'm NOT a fan. One of Austen's contemporaries called her writing "the glorification of the trivial," which fits EXACTLY. That's also the reason that I can't stand Jerry Seinfeld or (to a lesser degree) shows like 'Friends.' No matter what spin you put on it, and no matter how you try to dress it up, what it comes down to is people over-reacting to every-day events, and trying to sell it as drama. Not passing judgment on people who are fans, but I live all day every day in the same world as those characters (except that I have to occasionally leave the coffee shop and go to work), and when I want entertainment, I'm really not interested in a recap of trivial events we all face, no matter what spin and commentary are attached. Seriously, isn't entertainment supposed to be ENTERTAINING?!

So Austen has never held much interest for me, and I think it moderately amazing that 'Pride and Prejudice' was in 2003 judged by a BBC survey to be England's second-best-loved book (behind only 'Lord of the Rings'). WTF? Don't people read Bram Stoker any more? Or Shakespeare? England has shit-bags of great books to it's credit before you get to Austen. My theory is that it was a multiple-choice poll, with options arranged alphabetically by author, administered to people who were in too much of a hurry to read the whole list of options and really think about their selections. Hell, even the modern works of Rowling and Terry Pratchett beat the hell out of Austen's 'classic' stuff.

In any rate, Jane Austen's works were essentially the forerunners of modern mindless soap-operas, albeit presented with the literary skill of someone who should have been able to come up with a better storyline. The end result is that the writing is good, yes, but the plotline is UNBEARABLE. It's easy to APPRECIATE Austen's works as art, but boring as hell to actually read them.

So enter co-author Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote the zombie portions of PPZ, while at the same time leaving Austen's general writing and story-line largely intact. He's an author I'd acutally like to meet, for a few reasons. First of all, the portions of the book written by him might have been written by a 15-year old boy who's knowledge of weapons, fighting, and martial arts is drawn solely from comic-books and anime graphic novels. It really is pretty bad, complete with all sorts of comments that even a passing knowledge of military history would have prevented. The Brown Bess was a single-shot muzzle-loader, Seth; they kinda can't manage a hail of bullets. And if you're going to make your main characters Chinese-trained - and then highlight a rivalry between Chinese and Japanese martial arts - you DON'T give your main (Chinese-trained) characters distinctively Japanese weapons. Maybe I'm just demonstrating my super-geek status, but still. I half expected to read that the handle of Liz's katana was wrapped in telephone cord. (A case of beer to anyone who knows this reference.) So I'd like to meet Grahame-Smith, to try to get a feel for whether the comic-book errors were intentional as part of the over-the-top outlandishness of the zombie theme, or included because he really didn't know any better.

Regardless of being intentional or incidental, the additions made by the 21st century co-author are - from a high literature perspective - really, REALLY bad. Again, we're talking cheap comic-book scenes and ideas, presented in cheap comic-book fashion. Aside from pure entertainment value, there is NOTHING redeeming about the additions made to the book, and everything between the covers that might legitimately be called 'art' or 'literature' come from the parts written by Jane Austen, circa 1815 (iirc). So I think it's hugely ironic that all the quality, admirable, tip-of-the-hat worthy ART of PPZ is from the original Austen book, which was TOTALLY unreadable until it included outlandish and amateurishly written battles with the undead, and mis-citations to Japanese and Chinese systems of honor and combat.

Go figure, but everything GOOD is from Austen, who's writing is not at all entertaining. But everything ENTERTAINING is from Grahame-Smith, who's work is not only not 'good,' but is downright BAD. Not sure what it says about me that I plan on getting the other collaborative work between these two authors: 'Sense and Sensibility and Sea-Monsters.' And no, I did not just make that up.

But it does suggest that there's money to be made by revising the classics (which are legally in the public domain) with addition of lowest-common-denominator action scenes, without even bothering to overmuch change the title of the book. That might be something worth looking in to, although I don't think I'd be able to pull off the over-the-top outlandishness of Grahame-Smith. He's got that market pretty well cornered. But maybe there's a middle-ground to be exploited...