Jane Austen and Zombies

Hello, readers. Recently my world seemed drab and without hope. And by this I mean that Elizabeth Bennett seemed destined to never cleave a zombie's head from its shoulders.

But thankfully that's all been taken care of now, courtesy of Seth Grahame-Smith.


Yes, in the midst of the current crazy for all things zombie (Zombies vs Unicorns, Nazi Snow Zombies, and the growing canon of Zombie Survival Literature ) someone has decided that Pride and Prejudice, for all it's wit and romance, was lacking something, and that something was rampaging hordes of the undead. According to the publishers, they're keeping the original text and adding "all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action." I'm not sure how this will work, but then again, I'm not completely sure how velcro works either. Maybe this will be as snappy and magical as velcro. Maybe it will be as noisy and annoying. We'll see.

Charles J. Brown suggests titles for other classics to be Zombie-fied, including Portnoy's Complaint about Zombies, which adds evidence to my theory that Philip Roth is, in secret, waging a never-ending struggle against the undead. Some other possible titles:

The Great Gatsby Zombie
Lolita and Other Zombies
A Little Zombie Princess
As I Lay Dying, which doesn't really need a name change and is sort of about a zombie anyway. Addie Bundren lives!

See also: The Times and The Guardian.

Thanks to a shiny girl for the tip.

Happy Thursday, readers.

We're Back And Sillier Than Ever

Hello, readers, it has been far too long. How have you been? Things have been busy here, what with visiting home for Thanksgiving and wrapping up our new issue of the YR, plus, you know, the normal end of year school stuff. It's become clear, though, that the more or less every other dailyness of collating and commenting on interweb materials is a rather rewarding activity. One to be abandoned at much risk. Which is to say that when you find something you love doing, don't stop doing it, unless what you love doing is sprinkling dead people's ashes at the Jane Austen Museum, in which case, the museum curators politely ask that you please refrain from said activity.

Apparently, in the same manner that sailing enthusiasts might want their remains scattered off Puget Sound, it turns out that die-hard Jane Austen enthusiasts often ask to have their ashes dumped in the garden of the Jane Austen Museum. More and more of late, mounds of human ash have been discovered about the grounds by staff and gardeners, as well as some visitors, who have been known to remark, "Verily, I was much disconcerted." The staff themselves, though, seem to take a more practical stance towards the bits of dead people left on their garden, saying "[i]f it enriched the soil we wouldn't mind so much but the ashes have no nutrients at all." [via Maud]

In other somewhat absurd news, Shaken & Stirred put up a link today to a weird little add-on for Firefox. It's called Tumbarumba and it proposes to insert sentences from stories into your web pages as you view them. If you discover the sentence and click on it, then a whole story will spring to life in your browser. I've yet to try it, mainly because I'm on a public computer at the moment, but the whole thing sounds a little strange and pointless and therefore wonderful.

Hello Weekend

How was your week, readers? Mine was fine except for that brief moment where I was terrified that my life had no purpose. I should know better than to watch Heroes after midnight.

Here's things:

The always enlightening and entertaining Sarah Vowell, possible imp and definite author of such books as Assasination Vacation and The Wordy Shipmates, has written a wonderful introduction for Nick Hornby's latest and last collection of Believer essays. Everyone who doesn't hate laughing should read it.

Smart advice for writers from Mathew Cheney. Included: the secret that there is no secret plus several good quotes, including, "Read. Find out what you truly believe. Distance yourself from the familiar."

Seth and Chester Brown have sent an open letter to the Governor General's Literary Award regarding the shortlisting of the graphic novel Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki. While happy to see the work on the list, Seth and Chester wonder why only the writer, Mariko Tamaki, is recognized, considering that one of the defining characteristics of graphic novels is that the "words and pictures together are the TEXT."

Finally, in one of the more inspired bits of literary lunacy I've seen in a long while, Stephen Colbert mashes up Jane Austen and baseball in his latest segment of Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger (Austen shenanigans begin around the 1:40 mark). Be advised, though, this video contains strong punnage.