The Sandbox

From Quirk Books (no joke) comes a sure candidate for the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the National Book Award (or Booker? Austen was originally English...) and probably some assorted science fiction prizes: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Billed as written by Jane Austen, who one can assume is responsible for the first two segments of the title, and Seth Grahame-Smith, who must have chipped in the third, the novel tells the tale of Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy and legions of brain-eating undead.

Bastardization or improvement? Depends who you ask. The work is the literary equivalent of a YouTube mash-up. Grahame-Smith augments Austen's narrative with a tale concerning plagues of zombies that Elizabeth must repel, skewing the traditional themes of class and love a little in the irreverent direction. Or at least, I think class and love are central themes of Austen's seminal novel. I haven't read it.

And maybe this is where the potential of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies resides. Despite being an English major and lover of all things fiction, I guess I missed out on Austen for two reasons: one, my all-guys high school completely neglected to teach any female authors or women's history, and two, I avoid Victorian literature like the plague.

Zombie plague?

No, I've always been pretty open-minded when it comes to zombies. Moreso than to 18th-century British writing, anyway. But Grahame-Smith has timed his hybrid novel well (as has Austen, presumably? She is credited, so I must give credit where credit is due...). Zombie literature is on a tear, riding the success of acclaimed 2006 novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. And by acclaimed, I'm not just talking by fanboys and George Romero. Literary critics praised the novel's recounted-by-real-survivors format and the gravity with which it handled the usually kitschy source material.

That being said, I think even Grahame-Smith would have a hard time arguing that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies isn't kitschy. The question is, is it worthwhile? No, actually, the question really is if it's funny. It's a funny idea, but there'd have to be a lot of zombies woven pretty tightly into Austen's prose to make it more Shaun of the Dead or Night of the Living Dead than the product of a British novelist long dead.

However, is it worthwhile if it gets me-or any other similarly uncultured youngster-to read even part of Austen's classic? Personally, I'd rather spend valuable reading time with new authors and contemporary fiction dealing with contemporary issues (fun fact: people still write novels). And unless Grahame-Smith can match up to the recent groundswell of cutting-edge zombie films-both reverent and irreverent-he should probably leave Austen's exalted text with its brain uneaten.