You like Jane Austen? You are probably wrong

Fran Lebowitz does an interview with the Morgan Library about why people like Jane Austen for the wrong reasons, and learn to read the wrong way. "A book," she says, "is not supposed to be a mirror. It's supposed to be a door."

She says Jane Austen shows us human nature in a true way, she's intelligent, and she uses class structure to her advantage, and that is why she's so successful, not because she's full of lovely romance. Thoughts?

Pride and Prejudice and spin-offs

Kate Ward is mad, because there are too many Pride and Prejudice spin-offs, and a lot of them suck. But, to quote Joel McHale, "Our mantra is that 90 percent of all television is bad, and ten percent has never been better. We make fun of that 90 percent." Books are mostly the same: 90 percent crap, 10 percent worth my time (which means every year 30,000 books or so worth reading come out, which clearly is 29,950 more than I can aspire to read).

So maybe we should ban spin-offs. But then we wouldn't have Gregory Maguire's Wicked (book or musical!), or "Clueless," or "Bride and Prejudice," which may be the single most watched movie by me. Hell, even Shakespeare borrowed plots. And, as we saw in the previous post,Shakespeare is the golden standard for modern action.

Zombies are getting slayed by Natalie Portman

You heard right, ladies and gents. Natalie Portman is producing and starring in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the motion picture. I haven't read the book, but my sincere love/hate relationship with zombie culture leads me to believe that I will watch anything with zombies getting beasted.

The big question is: do you find NatPo killing zombies believable? I think she'd be more likely to do something twee and hipster than behead the undead, but hey, people will surprise you. And I'm behind anyone trying to stave off the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

Graphing literacy

I am an avid follower of GraphJam (you should be too!). And so, as we end our week together, I thought I'd share a reading venn diagram with you all.

What killed Jane Austen? Cows.

I'm sure some of you thought that viruses jumping from animals to people was relatively new, a la bird flu or swine flu or AIDs (all: very bad). Well guess what? It's just drug-resistant forms of these diseases from the overuse of antibiotics in our food and lifestyles that's new!

There's a new theory that Jane Austen died from cow TB. And you know what? That is super lame. But, on the plus side, if you become a really famous author, dear reader, in 200 years people will come up with all sorts of theories about what killed you (hopefully not something terribly ironic, like a huge paper cut at a book signing).

Jane Austen, drunk and dancing

There's a Jane Austen exhibit at The Morgan, that the lazy (and non-New York based) need not go to, because the New York Times went and wrote it up for us. Janey wrote letters, a few books (or so I hear), and partied:

In [a letter], from 1800, she confides that she must have drunk too much at a ball the night before; she danced 9 of the 12 dances, she said, and “was merely prevented from dancing the rest by the want of a partner.”

Sassy, Jane! Also, suspiciously similar to a Pride and Prejudice line. I think the point made here is that, while the Bronte sisters were wet blankets, I would take Jane Austen to any kegger.