Better, Deeper, More Intelligent
Better, deeper, more intelligent,
and sensitive than us, Jane Austen
provides a literary environment
in which we all, by getting lost in
admiration for her heroines,
feel so diminished we conclude
whichever of the many heroes wins
their heart is an unlucky dude.
Riding with her, dressed by Abercombie
and Fitch is not the sort of way
I’d like to spend my time. I’m not a zombie.
Perhaps because I am not gay
I can’t relate to all the topics Jane
obsesses on, and in Northanger
Abbey heroines would all complain
I was a crashing bore and wanker.
“Why couldn’t all these heroines go out
and get a job? ” was asked by Emma––
not Jane’s, Ms. Thompson’s Emma, without doubt
a heroine who’s not a femi-
nist––oh horrid word––but understands
how prejudice which is their pride
lands nearly all of them in Jane’s badlands
composed of English countryside.
Who needs a woman who is deeper than
themselves, far better, surely, and
far more intelligent? I’m not that man.
Although I think I understand
what all her heroines are saying, I
don’t look for girls who're good or deep.
I’m merely looking for the sort who’ll lie
with me before I fall asleep.
Inspired by an article by Jennifer Schuessler on “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, ” by Seth Grahame-Smith (“I Was a Regency Zombie, ” NYT, February 22,2009) :
The classic examples of that would be any speech by Judi Dench — her accent certainly helps — or Emma Thompson’s understated, wryly funny acceptance speech at the 1996 Oscars, when she won the award for best adapted screenplay for “Sense and Sensibility.”
“Before I came, I went to visit Jane Austen’s grave in Winchester Cathedral to pay my respects, you know, and tell her about the grosses, ” she said. She also thanked Sidney Pollack “for asking the right questions, like, ‘Why couldn’t these women go out and get a job? ’ ” Ms. Thompson — who accepted another award, at the Golden Globes, with a speech in the style of Jane Austen herself — then did what cool British award winners do: she put the Oscar in her guest bathroom.
These days, America is menaced by zombie banks and zombie computers. What’s next, a zombie Jane Austen? In fact, yes. Minor pandemonium ensued in the blogosphere this month after Quirk Books announced the publication of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, ” an edition of Austen’s classic juiced up with “all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem” by a Los Angeles television writer named Seth Grahame-Smith. (First line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”) … In fact, “Pride and Prejudice” may already be a zombie novel, contends Brad Pasanek, a specialist in 18th-century literature at the University of Virginia. “The characters other than the protagonist are so often surrounded by people who aren’t fully human, like machines that keep repeating the same things over and over again, ” Professor Pasanek said. “All those characters shuffling in and out of scenes, always frustrating the protagonists. It’s a crowded but eerie landscape. What’s wrong with those people? They don’t dance well but move in jerky fits. Oh, they are headed this way! ” While the vast industry of Austen sequels and pastiches runs heavily toward the romance-novel end of the literary spectrum - see “The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy” by Maya Slater, to be published in the United States in June - scholars have long emphasized the mean-girl side of Jane’s personality. Professor Pasanek, who has collaborated on a project that uses spam-detection software to analyze Austen fan fiction, cites the psychologist D. W. Harding’s 1940 essay “Regulated Hatred, ” which sounds more like a death-metal band than a piece of influential Austen scholarship.“Most people try to ignore the fact that Austen’s novels are sort of acid baths, ” Professor Pasanek said. “She’s so much better, deeper, more sensitive and intelligent than everyone around her that she has to regulate her own misanthropy. Her novels are hostile environments.”
2/22/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Ever In Memory
In Hampshire ~
Fair county of England
Dwelt a lady of skill and ability
The wonderful novelist
Jane Austen.
She wrote many stories...
'Pride and Prejudice'
'Sense and Sensibility'
And the ever-popular 'Emma'.
Although Jane died
With two novels unfinished,
Her unique and fine books
Are ours to own
Her films are still shown
And her name stands alone
In the famed archive zone.
poem by Joyce Hemsley
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of a man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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Emotional Upheaval
Only Terry Pratchett can be forgiven for irreverently sending
an unrefined Sam Vines into the pristine company of Pride
and Prejuduce - calling this classic a silly romance
Vimes launches into a diatribe against the stifling gentility that
held rich people enthralled within a useless existence, tells
author Jane Austen to write about
Corpses, murder and war – a cross between Mickey Spillane
and Margaret Mitchell; I love his advice about earning one’s
own keep leading to self-esteem
Enjoy the psychological tension Austen described –without
much action she creates more excitement and emotional
upheaval than Mike Hammer and
Scarlett O’Hara combined – only Wuthering Heights and
Jane Eyre can rival Jane Austen in making me
experience hallucinations!
Snuff – Terry Pratchett; Doubleday 2011
pp 69-72
poem by Margaret Alice Second
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You have delighted us long enough.
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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The Mare's Nest
Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
Was very, very bad indeed.
He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced -- but this she did not know.
For Belial Machiavelli kept
The little fact a secret, and,
Though o'er his minor sins she wept,
Jane Austen did not understand
That Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay
Absorbed one-half her husband's pay.
She was so good, she made hime worse;
(Some women are like this, I think;)
He taught her parrot how to curse,
Her Assam monkey how to drink.
He vexed her righteous soul until
She went up, and he went down hill.
Then came the crisis, strange to say,
Which turned a good wife to a better.
A telegraphic peon, one day,
Brought her -- now, had it been a letter
For Belial Machiavelli, I
Know Jane would just have let it lie.
But 'twas a telegram instead,
Marked "urgent," and her duty plain
To open it. Jane Austen read:
"Your Lilly's got a cough again.
Can't understand why she is kept
At your expense." Jane Austen wept.
It was a misdirected wire.
Her husband was at Shaitanpore.
She spread her anger, hot as fire,
Through six thin foreign sheets or more.
Sent off that letter, wrote another
To her solicitor -- and mother.
Then Belial Machiavelli saw
Her error and, I trust, his own,
Wired to the minion of the Law,
And traveled wifeward -- not alone.
For Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay --
Came in a horse-box all the way.
There was a scene -- a weep or two --
With many kisses. Austen Jane
Rode Lilly all the season through,
And never opened wires again.
She races now with Belial. This
Is very sad, but so it is.
poem by Rudyard Kipling
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Zombie Stomp
I don't need a doctor
But I need something to kill the pain
Don't know what I'm after
But the pressure's driving me insane
Searching for a different role
Had a funny feeling I can't hide
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Why can't they just let me be
Alone without the misery
Hey, hey, do the Zombie, Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Flirting with disaster
Morning after killing me again
Hiding from the laughter
And the demons dancing round my brain
Always dancing on thin ice
I guess I'll have to pay the price
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Thinkin' how it could have been
If I had never let them in
Hey, hey, do the Zombie, Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Take me to the doctor
'Cause I feel it coming on again
Don't know where I'm going
'Cause I guess I don't know where I've been
Looking for a different ride
Always dancing on thin ice
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Thinking how it could have been
If I had never let them in
Hey, hey, do the Zombie, Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
Hey, hey, do the Zombie Stomp
song performed by by Ozzy Osbourne
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of ths surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?
Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice
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One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen in Emma
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I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.
Jane Austen in Emma
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How much I love every thing that is decided and open!
Jane Austen in Emma
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Oh! dear; I was so miserable! I am sure I must have been as white as my gown.
Jane Austen in Emma
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Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
Jane Austen in Emma
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When And How
Could Jane Austen really have been a victim of Emerald Green? *
Or the workings of a homicidal maniac to say the least?
A blood-thirsty demon with ice water in his veins?
A true psychopath-preparing a virtual feast? ;
Compared to a modern-day hitman or woman
With the contract in their evil hands
First, to befriend their marks...
Hence, designing their cold blooded plan...
Setting their perfect time line...? ? ?
Alerted: The time is now...! ! !
Sinister-Reptilian Of Death
Arsenic-Is The How...
First In My Series: Murder For Hire
Not necessarily fiction
As in the death of Jane Austen
It is believed that arsenic may have been the weapon and
The how of her death
*Emerald Green-another name for an Arsenic compound
It is: AS and is number 33...in the Element Table.
By, Theodora Onken
February 5,2012
poem by Theodora Onken
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The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.
Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey
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But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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