The Elegant Variation: NOT A JOKE

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February 09, 2009

NOT A JOKE

A Los Angeles-based TV comedy writer (because, really, could this happen anywhere else?) has updated Pride and Predjudice with the one element missing all these years ...

Austen fans are in for a shock, with heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters becoming zombie slayers and taught how to fight like Japanese ninjas by Mr Darcy.

Apparently, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies contains 85% of the original text.

Posted at 12:15 AM in Words Fail | Permalink

Comments

I love P&P and I somehow love this idea. Of course, I like reading about zombies.

Posted by: lenore | February 09, 2009 at 04:41 AM

Finally, someone found a way to make this story NOT suck.

I'd read it.

Posted by: Jason Foux | February 09, 2009 at 08:29 AM

Could it happen anywhere else, you ask? Maybe France. Andre Breton would have approved. Also, Texas. Think of Don B. So, L.A., France and Texas.

Posted by: Jack Pendarvis | February 09, 2009 at 09:56 AM

But I think Mark Twain is behind this. He famously said of Jane Austen, "Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

Posted by: Jack Pendarvis | February 09, 2009 at 09:59 AM

Also check out Pride and Predator, the Elton John produced film. Same idea, but substitute aliens for zombies. Come soon to a theatre/er near you.

Posted by: James | March 05, 2009 at 10:19 AM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 09, 2009

NOT A JOKE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 09, 2009

NOT A JOKE

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism