Haven't updated for a while and am too sleepy to compose an epic blog post. So, as I finally got my marks back for my Contemporary Literature module today, here is my almost-a-first (it got 69, I needed 70) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies review. Shame it's only worth 20%!
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that Pride and Prejudice has a major significance within Western culture. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies does exactly what it says on the tin, a literary ‘mashup’ of Austen’s classic and a horror plot.
It’s one of those ideas that’s so simple, it’s amazing nobody’s ever thought of it before. Seth Grahame-Smith brings Austen’s heroines literally kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. The simplicity is what makes it effective. The title alone raises a smile, and the humour of Austen’s staid and somewhat repressed characters suddenly having to fight off zombie hordes works brilliantly in its bizarre juxtaposition.
Grahame-Smith turns the class tension between Lady de Bourgh and the Bennets into a believable snobbery on the former’s behalf over the suitability of the Bennets’ Chinese rather than Japanese martial training. Developing the sisters into highly skilled warriors also gives the women some agency, which most of Austen’s heroines traditionally seem to lack. Elizabeth et al. actually have something to do other than worry about how soon they’ll be married off.
However, the joke soon wears thin. While the conceit would work well as a short story or perhaps on a sketch show, the novel drags considerably. By directly interacting with Austen’s original text, Grahame-Smith shows himself to be an inferior writer – I often found myself longing to reread the original novel free from Grahame-Smith’s scatological obsessions. At times the humour veers towards to the puerile, though as the target audience for zombie novels is teenage boys, this is perhaps not surprising.
The novel felt very rushed. Admittedly zombies in Pride and Prejudice is in itself an Americanisation, but the humour here is supposed to come directly from this unusual splicing of genres. Scenes such as the Bennet sisters wandering through the English countryside, encountering skunks and racoons are jarring. It seemed as if Grahame-Smith had done very little research into Regency England. This is regrettable, as the novel’s central conceit is effective. Had Grahame-Smith’s input been written in a way that better emulated the style of Austen, it could have been funnier. Lizzie and Mr. Darcy making crude innuendo to one another is one of many incidents that seem decidedly out of character. What’s so frustrating is that the idea had the potential to become a brilliant novel, and falls short due to sloppy writing.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was an instant bestseller, and its influence is already being seen. In the eight months since its publication, we have been greeted with Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and Mr Darcy, Vampyre. As a joke that only (barely) works once – due to its originality, it’s hard to see what these homages will bring to the literary world. As its eponymous monsters, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies seems to have unleashed an unstoppable terror upon us.
Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Quirk: Philadelphia, April 2009, 320 pages, £8.99.
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
lookit, a book review.
Shere Hite - Oedipus Revisited: Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male Today
I think the first - and possibly most important thing - is that this book is basically a much shorter, slightly discursive summary of The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (Hite does these batshit huge "reports" on sexuality, building on and refuting parts of Kinsey's work, and as such is quite the Name). So... it can feel a little skim-y, like there are huge chunks missing even though it's a decent-sized book (although if the female sexuality version is anything to go by, the actual Report is a fucking tome, and not the fun kind). It is, however, readable enough; it's a bit disappointing in parts. Excuse me while I go academic, but it falls into the trap of being heteronormative and perhaps a little masculinist - Hite doesn't delve into gay sexuality or kink, nor does she consider reflections of race or class on sexuality, so her portrait can appear a little two-dimensional and limited (which leads to a criticism of generalities, although I'll kick myself in the foot by acknowledging that you have to generalise a little, and it's easy to generalise too much when you've only got so much space to deal with).
Oedipus Revisited is an interesting book, that deserves a bit of time - thankfully it's written in such a way that it is easy enough to pick up and put down, giving the reader time to reflect. I don't think it aims to be definitive; it presents a simplified version of the findings and then extrapolates a few theories. Hite's approach to the intertwining "normal" male sexuality (the myth she's spent the first 250-odd pages systematically trashing) and politics is compelling although not a particularly new one; politics is power, power is identity, and identity is sexuality, gender, race and class, to simplify things. It can appear a little jarring, the first time you're confronted with the idea, but Hite takes a little time to explore the idea (although I think she assumes her readers are familiar with the idea to begin with)
Hite is clearly more familiar with female sexuality (The Hite Report on Female Sexuality was first published in the mid-70s), and a lot of Oedipus Revisited is concerned with male reactions to female sexuality, which is mildly irritating, although equally interesting; I'd have liked more on the societal junctions and less on the clitoris, but at the same time the presentation of the myth vs reality is illuminating. My biggest criticism is that Hite assumes her readers are familiar, not just with her earlier work, but with the basics of gender theory, but Oedipus Revisited is still an interesting and informative read - if you want to take the time to digest it.
And now, back to the hook.
I think the first - and possibly most important thing - is that this book is basically a much shorter, slightly discursive summary of The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (Hite does these batshit huge "reports" on sexuality, building on and refuting parts of Kinsey's work, and as such is quite the Name). So... it can feel a little skim-y, like there are huge chunks missing even though it's a decent-sized book (although if the female sexuality version is anything to go by, the actual Report is a fucking tome, and not the fun kind). It is, however, readable enough; it's a bit disappointing in parts. Excuse me while I go academic, but it falls into the trap of being heteronormative and perhaps a little masculinist - Hite doesn't delve into gay sexuality or kink, nor does she consider reflections of race or class on sexuality, so her portrait can appear a little two-dimensional and limited (which leads to a criticism of generalities, although I'll kick myself in the foot by acknowledging that you have to generalise a little, and it's easy to generalise too much when you've only got so much space to deal with).
Oedipus Revisited is an interesting book, that deserves a bit of time - thankfully it's written in such a way that it is easy enough to pick up and put down, giving the reader time to reflect. I don't think it aims to be definitive; it presents a simplified version of the findings and then extrapolates a few theories. Hite's approach to the intertwining "normal" male sexuality (the myth she's spent the first 250-odd pages systematically trashing) and politics is compelling although not a particularly new one; politics is power, power is identity, and identity is sexuality, gender, race and class, to simplify things. It can appear a little jarring, the first time you're confronted with the idea, but Hite takes a little time to explore the idea (although I think she assumes her readers are familiar with the idea to begin with)
Hite is clearly more familiar with female sexuality (The Hite Report on Female Sexuality was first published in the mid-70s), and a lot of Oedipus Revisited is concerned with male reactions to female sexuality, which is mildly irritating, although equally interesting; I'd have liked more on the societal junctions and less on the clitoris, but at the same time the presentation of the myth vs reality is illuminating. My biggest criticism is that Hite assumes her readers are familiar, not just with her earlier work, but with the basics of gender theory, but Oedipus Revisited is still an interesting and informative read - if you want to take the time to digest it.
And now, back to the hook.
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