PRIDE AND PREJUDICE WITH ZOMBIES
Like a Jane Austen novel you really want to read, says the flap copy quote for this NY Times bestseller by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame Smith. That would be a fine anti-intellectual sentiment but for those of us who, pardon me, actually liked dipping into a long-vanished world of manners and nuances, precious in the good sense of the word as rare and valuable. The zombies are a cheap distraction and a trivializing of Jane Austen's world. Except there is, I think, something more clever going on here besides a clever take-off precious in the pejorative sense. You get the idea that the zombies somehow represent the dark repressed underside of British culture--the savage cannibalisitc force of empire underneath this formal society. It's a strange virus. One bite turns a living person dead and then they develop a lust for munching brains but can be fooled into attacking a cauliflower. Very funny also to see an Elizabeth and Darcy who are trained martial arts warriors--Elizabeth vowe...