I Took One for the Team When I Bought This Book

With my review, I extend my condolences to Jane Austen, eternally linked to this book through no fault of her own.

Ring the maid for tea and finger sandwiches, but don’t get too comfortable because I intended to be concise with my appraisal, giving the subject no more time than it deserves. If Jane Austen isn’t your cup of tea, check in later this week for a more palatable topic. I assume everyone has embraced that counsel and will compose this analysis for my personal amusement.

Being an ardent Jane Austen enthusiast requires rereading six novels because that’s all she wrote. It is a quirk I indulge in. “Sandition” is not one of the six, but it is one of two stories left incomplete by Austen when she died of consumption at age 41. The other unfinished work is “Lady Susan.”

“Lady Susan” and “Sanditon” were finished by randos, (random authors). The film “Love & Friendship” starring Kate Beckinsale…

*Okay, did you see her at the Golden Globes last night? Somewhere in an attic, a painting of Beckinsale ages, and she looks every day of her age- 50.

Anyway, “Love and Friendship” was based on “Lady Susan.” Masterpiece Theater created a series based on “Sandition.” The writers who share credit with Austen don’t differentiate which words or storylines were hers. How much of those unfinished novels did she write? I want to know. As it stands, I regard both as Regency click bate.

There is a difference between those two unfinished books and fan-fiction.

Whether you’re a particular fan of Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abby, Persuasion, Emma, Mansfield Park, or Pride and Prejudice, you must admit the most loved character Austen created was the two-dimensional, brooding, tall, dark, rich, and handsome, Mr. Darcy. [Sigh] Pride and Prejudice, arguably the most popular of Austen’s works, has been rewritten hundreds of times. I support these books, having read most of them. It is for the love of Mr. Darcy that I have wasted my life in this manner. I want more. Austen’s work is so limited that fan-fiction writers have picked up her quill, and applied every what if… What if one alteration was made, where would the story have gone?

If you have published one of these volumes, good for you. I might have tested my ability, except every mutation of the narrative has been written many times.

The most repeated tropes:

• Lizzy comes into a fortune of her own making her Mr. Darcy’s equal.
• Elizabeth and Richard marry.
• Darcy marries Ann.
• Fie, Mr. Bennet expires and Mr. Collins tosses the Bennet women into the dreaded metaphorical hedgerows.
• A storm traps Mr. Darcy and Miss Elizabeth, impelling them to find shelter, resulting in a compromise, forcing them into marriage before Darcy’s temperament can undergo the transformation that makes him loveable.
• Mr. Wickham is found murdered… who done it?
• The lovely angelic Jane is a jealous, narcissistic bitch.
• Miss Bingley steals into Mr. Darcy’s bedchamber in the dark of night, hoping to force him to marry her.
• Mr. Darcy is a vampire.

As you see, I know my Pride and Prejudice fan-fiction. Some are beautifully written and would be successful original novels on their own merits if the characters were renamed. Many are good for what they are. More than a few have tempted me to pitch the book through a closed window, as per Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” in the movie “Silver Lining’s Playbook.”

“I will apologize on behalf of Ernest Hemingway because that’s who’s to blame here.”

~Silver Lining’s Playbook.

[internal monologue] For the love of God get to the point, Lydia.

I have yet to mentioned the book I plan to review. Your tea must be cold. Ring for a fresh pot; I’ll wait.

I thought I’d seen it all, but I was wrong. I purchased the following variation, so you don’t have to.

I don’t know the ins and outs of public domain. Austen does have distant relatives who survive. But this volume leads me to believe copyright does not protect a two-hundred year old book and any idiot can add a single line to her story and call it his own.

“PRIDE and PREJUDICE: But Mr. Darcy is a Vape God”

I shit you not. That’s the title.

Here is a taste of Dick Cody Heese’s work:

“And bodacious vaping abilities” is the only alteration to the original book in the first several pages.

This text is the effort of a lazy man. Aside from a partial sentence added here and there, in most chapters, this is Jane’s work verbatim. Don’t misunderstand me, I laughed; it’s funny. It might even garner the interest of a few people who would never read the un-bastardized book. This is too ridiculous to be called plagiarism.

This publication is what Ferris Bueller might have written in high school if the assignment was to write a variation of Pride and Prejudice. I have questions: How many people paid full price for this book? How much money did Dick Cody Heese make from this novel? And why didn’t I think of this first? That’s it. You’re welcome.

*Thank you, Thing-2, for suggesting I read this stupid book.

~~~•~~~

Several film adaptations of Pride and Prejudice have left Austen fans in disagreement over which actor nailed the role of Mr. Darcy. I covered that topic in a previous post, link below, but you don’t need me to tell you, the correct answer is Colin Firth.

Sanity Break… Let’s Discuss Mr Darcys