Public Service Announcement

~ Clarissa

Are you one of those people who can’t get enough of Pride and Prejudice? Do you have strong opinions on whether the BBC series is better than the movie because you have watched both numerous times? Are you mesmerized by the characters and just can’t let them go?

Well, I have good news for you. P.D. James, the grand dame of classical British mystery, has published a sequel to this great novel. It is titled Death Comes to Pemberley. Of course, P.D. James is no Jane Austen. Nobody can really compare to this brilliant, amazing, fantastic writer. (This is a cue to all haters of Jane Austen that this is not a blog for them). But among all of the sequels, prequels and rewritings of Pride and Prejudice, Death Comes to Pemberley is definitely the best.

December is a very harsh month, especially for academics. Finals, grading, finishing up the service requirements, submitting reams of paperwork – all this makes one incapable of processing any profound kind of reading. P.D. James’s novel has come out at a very propitious moment. It is a lot of fun to read about the Bennetts, Mr. Darcy and his sister Georgiana, the Bingleys, and the new people P.D. James introduces into the lives of these immortal characters.

P.D. James is 91 years old right now. I only wish we all preserve her sense of humour and her freshness of perception at that age.

Here is a video of P.D. James discussing her new novel and her love of Jane Austen. Ninety-one years old, people. She should publish a book on how to be so beautiful and alert at that age.

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Published by Clarissa

27 thoughts on “Public Service Announcement”

  1. Yes, I’ve been dithering about this because I don’t generally like Austen fanfic, but: it’s P.D. James. I take it that you enjoyed it?

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    1. How do you manage to avoid Jane Austen? You need to avoid television in its entirety for that. 🙂

      Do you know Bridget Jones Diaries? That’s a very weak and stupid imitation of Pride and Prejudice.

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      1. As I understand it he was essentially attacking English literature, with Austen as a standard, for the benefit of a distinctive American literature. To that end he has been famously quoted as penning the following:

        “Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her [Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

        and

        “I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book.”

        Full vituperative essay on Austen by M. Twain published here! — http://www.amazon.com/Who-Mark-Twain/dp/0061735000

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  5. Helena Suess :

    Yeah. Does it suck of me that I liked P&P way better than I liked Huck Finn?

    I like it more, too. 🙂

    But shhh, don’t tell my students. It always make them happy to know that I approve of American literature. They don’t read it, of course, but they like to know that I do. 🙂

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  7. I had an undergrad literature professor who was contemptous of Jane Austen because she never wrote a scene with only men present. He felt that this proved that she was “shallow.” I have thus never read any Jane Austen, based on his opinion. I also never read Steven King, based on Nnedi Okorafor’s opinion(*), even though she told me she did not intend to keep people from reading King.. There are too many books to read; one must have strategies for eliminating authors from consideration.

    (*) http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20041025/kinga.shtml

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    1. “I had an undergrad literature professor who was contemptous of Jane Austen because she never wrote a scene with only men present.”

      – That’s the strangest approach to literature I have ever encountered. Maybe we could term it “penis-counting” literary criticism. 🙂 🙂

      “There are too many books to read; one must have strategies for eliminating authors from consideration.”

      -Very true. So many good books!

      Very good article. Thank you for the link. Now that’s the kind of literary criticism that I really enjoy.

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      2. I found the article but the site still won’t work for me. 😦

        bloggerclarissa :Maybe you can Google the title of the article: “Stephen King’s Super-Duper Magical Negroes.”

        Ah, yes. I remember John Coffey. And Mother Abigail. And Dick Halloran. And Mike Hanlon. And Susannah Dean. And &c., &c., &c.

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    1. I think your link’s broken too.

      Was this the same person who claimed King’s work was not exactly horror but blue collar realism with horror plots? He mainly really sucks at sex scenes and endings, but he captures the seedy grotesquerie of small town life as good as anything this side of “Blue Velvet.”

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