Pride and Prejudice and Bitching and Moaning
One of the hotter discussion topics of late among genre fiction writers and readers I know is the Mayan calendar-level apocalypse known as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either A)a brilliant literary mashup, B)a cute pastiche that’s better in the concept than in the reading, C)a sign of the impending doom of all that is Good, True and Beautiful in the literary world – if not some combination of the above. Adding to the geshrying is the cavalcade of announcements of followup or piggyback titles. Vide author Seth Grahame-Smith’s hefty deal for Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, not to mention the various upcoming projects reinventing Austen’s estimable Mr. Darcy as a vampire, and, well, you get the idea. It’s getting thick on the ground in Austen Mash-up land.
All of this adds up to a lot wailing and moaning and rending of garments and whatnot – some of which, I confess, I’ve indulged in – over how “originality is dead” and “why is this stuff getting published when good books are going begging for publishers” and “that’s all so fanfic”; cries of “Batman versus Spider-Man” and “I ran that as a roleplaying game in college” can be heard, if you listen hard enough. Surely, there is merit to these claims, yes? Surely we as writers can do better than mash-ups of existing literary tropes and characters, or taking historical figures and slathering dollops of speculative fiction goodness all over them. There are standards to be upheld, durnit, rigorous vetting to be done at the gatehouse of the imagination to ensure only the appropriate ideas get through.
Except, of course, when you see a story – a marvelous story – like John Kessel’s “Pride and Prometheus”, which introduces Dr. Victor Frankenstein to Miss Mary Bennett, both with impeccable literary pedigrees. “Pride and Prometheus” is currently thundering through the awards season like Bo Jackson with a clear route to the end zone, its re-imagination of existing literary characters clearly no impingement to the recognition of its quality.
Or how about John Myers-Myers’ beloved Silverlock, which features the entire cast of the western literary canon gone gadabout on some lovely island real estate? Or Riverworld, an acknowledged classic of the speculative fiction canon, which happens to feature everyone who ever lived (with Sam Clemens front and center)? Or Fred Saberhagen’s team-up of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula? Or H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Howard teaming up to fight Lovecraft’s own literary creations in Barbour & Raleigh’s Shadows Bend (not to be confused with Nick Mamatas’ Move Underground, wherein it’s beat poets instead of weird fiction authors going up against ol’ squidface and his minions). Or…
Clearly, there’s a lot of this stuff out there. Clearly, a lot of it is good, and well-written, and entertaining, and professional. Clearly, a lot of it is worth reading. To quote Ramsey Campbell in his essay “Plagued by Plagiarism II”, “ideas matter less than execution, and borrowing is not a crime”. If the concept of P&P&Z is what’s bothersome to some folks, then they’ve got a long line of literary forebears – anybody remember Balzac’s Melmoth Reconciled? – to disapprove of as well. If the issue is not the notion of the literary mash-up, but rather that these particular ones seem to be lacking in specific merit, or to be enjoying success disproportionate with any merits they might have, well, that’s another issue entirely.
In other words, commenting on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for its quality, or lack thereof – your mileage may vary, and your response is your own – as a specific book certainly is fair game. Dinging it as an exemplar of all literary evil, or even a horrific trending in genre fiction, is less so. I don’t have a particular dog in this fight – my experience with P&P&Z consists of hearing about it, being amused by the cover art, and chortling over the well-constructed first paragraph – but if you want to tear it down, or praise it to the skies based on its own merits, then by all means, go ahead. It is certainly every reader’s and every writer’s right to either applaud or kvetch about what they’ve seen and read. If you don’t like the book, you don’t like the book, and that’s fine. But to zap it for literary sins of a sort that have been largely condoned before is a less convincing argument.
That being said, the most elegant response to the whole kerfuffle is to figure out why a particular manifestation is appealing, and to do better. Admittedly, it’s less fun than unrestrained kvetching. More work, too. But the end results might be a bit more tangible, and, as a bonus, you’ll be providing something to the reading and writing community: The chance to bitch about your horrible literary crimes. And if that’s not giving back to the community, I don’t know what is.
