Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Snap Judgement/Review

The following paragraph was originally going to be my conclusion, but it's too important to leave until the end of an incredibly long post, so I'll just say it here:

What bothers me the most about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is that I know that people who have never read Pride and Prejudice before bought this book, but instead of getting Austen plus some cool zombie action, they are going to get decent zombie action and sub-par Austen. New readers are going to think that Austen is a poor writer who cannot develop characters or move a plot along. Instead of bringing new readers to Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies does a disservice to the text that its entire existence is based on.

---

What follows is sort of a rant, not quite an essay. Possibly in the same way that zombies are sort of dead but not quite inanimate. It is, however, long.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a lot like a zombie: lumbering, ill-mannered, and serving no purpose but to be nuisance to be dispatched. It's an interesting idea clumsily executed with little attention to important narrative elements such as pacing, style, and characterization. Considered as an "adaptation/alteration" of Austen, it's distractingly inconsistent; considered as a novel on its own merits, it's pedestrian.

The book follows the plot of Austen's novel closely, hitting almost all the major (and most of the minor) plot points. Seth Grahame-Greene's most evident contributions to the book are the zombie-related details (all five Bennet sisters are trained zombie fighters). The zombie scenes themselves range from clever to pedestrian; the quality of writing takes a noticeable dip as it perfunctorily describes action with little of Austen's irony or wit. Graham-Greene is most successful when he integrates the martial-arts world of zombie fighting with appropriate moments in the novel, such as Elizbeth's response to Darcy's first, insulting proposal (there's kicking). Graham-Greene also inserts references to zombies or the plague into characters' dialogue, with less success. Placing his own work immediately next to Austen's, in the same paragraph, further emphasizes the differences in style, tone, and skill, especially when he steps on her punchlines. For example, Graham-Greene alters Mr. Bennet's classic response to Mrs. Bennet's insistence that he make Elizabeth marry Mr. Collins. The new version reads as follows. Guess which part is added.

An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do; for I shall not have my best warrior resigned to the service of a man who is fatter than Buddha and duller than the edge of a learning sword. (88)

Yes, Grahame-Smith's idea of humour consists of fat jokes, double entendres about balls, and vomitting. Classy.

Grahame-Smith is not only the co-author of this book, but also an editor. Sections of the original are cut completely (the portrait scene is missing from the Pemberley visit) or condensed. Some chapters begin on the left-hand page and end on the following right-hand facing page. While this was presumably done to make the narrative shorter, it paradoxically results in making it read slower. How can this be?

Two reasons. First, the pleasure of getting into any novel lies in getting caught up in the story and the characters. Cutting down Pride and Prejudice means cutting back on characterization and lessening the reader's investment in that most basic of questions: what happens next? Just because something is shorter does not mean that it will read shorter; flow is as important as length. Secondly, Austen's rhythm, which carries the reader along, is disrupted. Why? Because Graham-Smith inexplicably takes it upon himself to edit Austen's prose. He makes seemingly minor edits that ruin entire paragraphs. Take, for example, this paragraph, in which Jane finally realizes that Miss Bingley is not as nice as she seems. This is the altered version:

As she predicted, four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him [Mr. Bingley]. She endeavoured to persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be blind to Miss Bingely's inattention. After waiting at home every morning for a fortnight, the visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay and the alteration of her manner would allow Jane to deceive herself no longer. The letter which she wrote to her sister will prove what she felt. (113)

All the words are Austen's except the first three (which introduces a vague pronoun reference, but hey, nobody's perfect), yet the paragraph comes to a clunky stop with that final sentence. Here's the original, with the excised portions in bold:

Four weeks passed away, and Jane saw nothing of him. She endeavoured to persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be blind to Miss Bingley's inattention. After waiting at home every morning for a fortnight, and inventing every evening a fresh excuse for her, the visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay, and yet more, the alteration of her manner, would allow Jane to deceive herself no longer. The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister will prove what she felt.

The first eliminated phrase relates to Jane's characterization—of course she would find an excuse for Caroline Bingley's rudeness. The second excision is unforgiveable because the "yet more" indicates the importance of the detail. Taken as a whole, the paragraph builds, starting with a short sentence, culminating in the long third sentence and then transitioning smoothly to the letter in the final sentence. The altered paragraph reads oddly because the sentences are of a more uniform length—there is little variation to maintain interest and the repeated rhythm is annoying. The last omission, "on this occasion", seems excusable, yet it is more precise than the edited version (Jane writes more than one letter to Elizabeth) while the edited version is more abrupt.

Grahame-Greene's own writing could have used a better editor. In a sentence quoted by Entertainment Weekly as an example of his cleverness, Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy, and Mr. Bingley find that the Netherfield kitchen staff has been killed by zombies. To prevent further infection, Mr. Darcy must decapitate the dead servants: "He then made quick work of beheading the slaughtered staff, upon which Mr. Bingley politely vomited into his hands" (82). For "upon which" substitute "whereupon" and it won't sound like poor Bingley threw up on his servants and on his hands. Here's another example where "upon which" should not be used next to a noun: "Kitty put the creature down with a shot to the face, upon which Lydia placed her barrel against its head and promptly dispatched it to Hell" (91).

In addition to awkward writing, the zombie part of the novel needs a clearer narrative arc. It is uninteresting to have the Bennet sisters already be capable zombie killers—there are few opportunities for tension or development. It would have been much more fun to have mysterious creatures appear, slowly at first, and watch people figure out what was going on (see: Dracula). The novel already has an education component, as Elizabeth learns to distrust first impressions; adding how to kill zombies to the mix could have been fun. Moreover, the best zombie texts (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) have used zombies as a metaphor, pointing out how grind of modern society (dreary job, mass consumerism) reduce us to nothing more than hollow shells of our former selves. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies takes no advantage of the potential for social commentary, even as it appropriates a classic work of social satire.

Having already gone into great detail about the writing style, I'll spare you, my poor reader, the litany of abuses visited upon characters, whose inconsistent behaviour (would Lydia have ever paid sufficient attention in class to master the art of killing zombies? Would Mrs. Gardiner ever cheat on her husband? Would Mr. Collins be so dismayed over Charlotte's death that he would hang himself on her favourite tree?) could lead to diagnoses of schizophrenia.

Instead, I will end with what I believe is the most unforgiveable of Grahame-Smith's additions, pure cliché which any good writer would blush to acknowledge:

For the more she dwelled on the subject, the more powerful she felt; not for her mastery of the deadly arts, but for her power over the heart of another. What a power it was! But how to wield it? Of all the weapons she had commanded, Elizabeth knew the least of love; and of all the weapons in the world, love was the most dangerous. (213)

And here I was, thinking that love was a battlefield.