Not a Haiku

My last haiku was obviously too easy, but I can't say I care. I think I like the sound and shape of it best of the four I've written so far. Yes, it was a pillow, and it seems that many of you find your own is calling to you as clearly as mine has been lately (damn these papers to grade!)

Today, though, I am forced to take a break from all of the sweat-inducing haiku stress (just kidding) to discuss a book I am presently reading--and presently loathing.

I hate to criticize books. I hate that I am still reading this particular one, even though I cannot say I've enjoyed a single page of it. Why am I still reading? Perhaps it is because, 226 pages in, I still hope for what I know is hopeless.

Let me explain: While on my recent Jane Austen kick, I discovered a number of spin-off books dealing with Darcy and various other characters. Frankly, I almost bought several of them outright at a bookstore, but I decided to check out a few from the library first. Good thing I did.

The particular book I am loathing/reading is called Darcy's Passions: Pride and Prejudice Retold through His Eyes. Sounds like a book right down my alley. I've always found the male perspective intriguing--perhaps more so than the female--and I've always adored the original book. It is on a very short list of books I've read more than five times and intend to read again.

The Preface to the book also sounded promising, describing a teacher who had adored Austen's work, and who finally decided to put her love of Austen, her knowledge of the time period, and her writing skill altogether and create this novel. She certainly knows the book, and for the most part, seems to understand the era in which it was written.

The bad part? She can't write.

Okay, yes, Regina Jeffers can write. She can form words and put them together on a page in a somewhat coherent way. But the words are stilted, the dialogue is putridly lacking in anything worth knowing, and in the course of 226 pages so far, she reveals absolutely NOTHING new about any of the characters. Darcy is lame, obtuse, boring, angst-ridden, and highly undesirable. In attempting to "fill in" the scenes which we don't see in the first novel, Jeffers creates vacuous scenes where absolutely nothing happens. She often relates stupid dialogue--"Oh, I see you have come down early for breakfast today." "Yes, I have some business in town."--and then tells us of exchanges between the characters that would actually be more interesting in extremely brief summary, brushing through the elements I've always wondered about. Characters move about the room for no reason, and she hops in and out of everybody's heads, explaining the feelings behind particular comments when the comments (from the original book) speak for themselves.

I won't even get into the grammar, though the dangling modifiers are frequent enough to make me want to tear out my hair. The writing is drivel, unimaginative and stilted, and had I no knowledge of Austen's classic I would have quit reading in the first chapter.

It's just too bad. As with the seasons of Heroes, I find the idea great, but the execution of that idea falls so far from any semblance of true enjoyment that I felt I had to say something. Even so, despite my lack of time, I will probably finish the vile book. Then I'll take it back to the library, thankful, at least, that I didn't pay a dime for it. I hope none of you do, either.

Writing Questions

Since I want to know all of these questions from you, I'll ask them of myself first:

1. Whose writing does your own most resemble?

Answer: My writing is probably most similar to Shannon Hale's YA lit.

2. Which writer's writing and revising habits does your method most resemble?

Answer: Gustav Flaubert. He'd work and rework a sentence for a month to make it right. I tend to revise my stuff eleventy-seven times before I find myself willing to send it out to anywhere really important.

3. Of past writers, which do you wish you had been in another life?

Answer: I wouldn't wish to live their lives (none were that happy), but I wish I'd written Shakespeare's stuff (obviously!)... if not his, then Austen's, Dickens's, or Chaucer's (even the bawdy ones). I'd also love to have written Hawthorne's novels.

And now, your answers...

All Things Austen

[Note: For the next few posts--or however long it takes me to come down from my manic high--I'm going to be posting all about the stuff I LOVE... and if you prefer depressing, angst-ridden posts by me, you'll need to scroll down a few days (I have plenty of them to spare, I'm afraid). I'm too happy to be sad right now.]

I, like many women adore Jane Austen. Unlike some, I cannot say I'm a fan of the dresses usually displayed in illustrations and films. Instead, I love the manners, the characters, the walking around fields and other stuff that seems to happen. Vacuous? I beg to differ. I am many things, but not vacuous. Besides, I adore so much related to Austen's books, and I've recently found reasons to adore them even more.

I've long kept my heart Austen-centered, for I watched the original PBS version of Pride and Prejudice when I was in my teens, read the book, and read it again (and again, and again). I read it in graduate school, and realized at that point that the PBS version didn't do the book justice at all.

But then A and E's version came out--you know the one I'm talking about, with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. Dreamy, dreamy, dreamy. I taped it all, then bought the VHS set, and a few years ago my brother bought me the 3-CD Special Edition. I've watched it every few months or so ever since the movie came out originally. It is by far the best version ever made. I also adored Gwineth Paltrow as Emma, the best version of that book I've seen. The film adaptation of Mansfield Park actually improved on the book, so I've seen that one several times over, too.

Recently, though, other Austen wonders have come out--not adaptations of the original novels, but new takes on the themes which run through them. PBS presented a delightful if impossible spin on Pride and Prejudice called Lost in Austen, taking the life of a woman fascinated with Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy character and turning it into a romp through the book, changing events in hilarious ways. (Yes, hilarious. Not just cute or quirky. Laugh out loud funny.)

And recently, I've read Shannon Hale's novel Austenland, a more realistic (sort of) exploration of a fictional "resort" for women who love Jane Austen's time period and characters. The resort goers dress in period costume, participate in pastimes of the period (lots of walks and whist), and mingle with paid actors who pretend to be "types" from the books. Several of my friends read the book as well, and we all wonder whether such a place exists. (It doesn't, at least not that I know of. Yes, I looked.)

So, there it is. And since many of my readers are men, don't think you'll be left out in future posts, for I have many other things I love to discuss. Besides, you could learn a lot from Mr. Darcy.

A Lame Spin on Pride and Prejudice

Don't get your hopes up... I'm not quite human yet. My son went through a hard day yesterday, too, where he did little beyond lie on me and drink water (slowly). Scared me a bit, but I still haven't gotten my appetite back, so I figure he's just fighting what's been attacking me for the last week. 

I said I'd blog on Fairest, but I'm not going to, not yet, anyway. I finally watched the film version of Pride and Prejudice--the Hollywood film--and I was so utterly unimpressed with it I'm not sure what to say. Perhaps it points to what I think makes most pseudo-epic Hollywood films fail miserably: cinematography and soundtrack replace a good script.

You might assume I am a purist, and to a degree you might be right, for I love a good script, love a good story, and love dialogue more than most... but I don't need for everything to reflect a book entirely, or the recent miniseries of Lost in Austen would have been unwatchable. But Lost in Austen, for all the liberties it took with Austen's original, used the original in such a fabulous, engaging, and humorous way that it taught viewers about the characters, paid its homage to a wonderful novel, and reflected the truth of the original, linking it to today's world in a refreshing way. (Can you tell I liked it? I almost sent $80 to the local PBS station so I could get the DVD of the 3-hour series). 

But the film with Keira Knightley did little to reveal any of the characters from the book. Honestly, I blame the director. Some of the actors were completely miscast, or were directed to play people who simply did not exist in the book at all. Bingley was an idiot, simpering, stupid, pathetic in his lack of backbone. Mr. Collins bore absolutely no resemblance to the novel's character at all. He was bland, bland, bland, when he should have been pompous, oily, and smarmy. He should have made us squirm. And Mr. Darcy was neither handsome nor regal... and though Colin Firth was brilliant in the role (and most men would fall by comparison), he cannot be the only capable male actor with a decent face out there. 

Most of all, though, I sensed that the director wanted to make Pride and Prejudice better. But Joe Wright didn't get it (and I must say that most men don't). He neither understood Darcy nor Elizabeth, nor any of the rest, and in the end he created a world as stilted as the entire second Star Wars trilogy. Had I not seen other versions recently, I might wonder what I ever saw in that book at all. Really terrible. Almost as bad as the local theatre company's versions of Shakespeare's plays (I need to blog about that soon). 

I think I'll go back over my DVR and watch the Lost in Austen series again, if only to get the yucky taste out of my brain. Were I Jane Austen, I fear I would have rolled over in my grave from Joe Wright's version. One should understand a work thorough before trying to take liberties with it.

Lost in Austen--Living the Fantasy

If you are any kind of Jane Austen fan (and I know some of you are), you must check out the new PBS series Lost in Austen. It takes a woman from the modern world and, through a door linking her modern apartment to a door in the servants' quarters of the Bennett household (from Pride and Prejudice), this woman, Amanda Price, and Elizabeth Bennett switch places. 

Now, if you are an Austen fan, the series will be delightful all on its own, but even if you aren't a fan (and I'm sure some of you aren't), the show sparked an idea for me that I have been mulling over ever since. Is there a place, in a novel or a film, where you've longed to be? For many women, Austen's world was this kind of utopia, and part of the appeal of the series is that the woman thrown suddenly into the world immediately begins to discover the not-so-nice aspects of living during this time.

How would you fair in your ideal world? Let me take one of ideal worlds: the hidden, magic world of Harry Potter. How would I get along in that world? Honestly, though I'd like to think I'd catch on to all of the stuff and be a brilliant Hogwarts student (like Hermione Granger), I'm afraid I'll more than likely resemble Loony Lovegood, or worse, turn out to be a squib like Filch (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you have to read the books!)... 

Or I could be one of those people killed by Voldemort. Or beaten up by Dudley. 

I guess my point is that all of this is fantasy. While the idea of being in one of these worlds sounds great, the reality wouldn't probably be so fabulous. Then again, even this show is fantasy, for it doesn't reveal some of the more sordid differences between Austen's world and ours. I wouldn't last a month there, for within that time I'd be looking for a certain women's product, and when I couldn't find it... well, I don't think I could handle that. 

I don't think I'd deal with the whole chamber pot thing well, either. What about you? What fantasy have you been holding onto? Time to 'fess up!