Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

Hertfordshire, you say? The area has far greater significance for me now as I know someone who lives there, but it has been of interest to me since it was the setting for, you know, Pride and Prejudice: The Original (But No Longer the One and Only) by the long-dead but never to be forgotten 18th Century author, Jane Austen.

A prequel to the runaway 2009 bestseller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahme-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls is written by Steve Hockensmith, for whom this is a departure. As he says on his blog (where he worries fans of his debut novel, Holmes on the Range, may wonder at the lack of cowboys - and, presumably - detectives - in his latest novel):

Potential new readers, meet loyal old readers. I think you'll find you have a lot in common. Beyond a fondness for the word "frakkin'," I mean. You like historical novels. You like funny novels. You like novels with a touch of the macabre. You like Raisinets, Air Supply and long walks in the park.

Where will all this end? It's one thing for Kurosawa to rewrite Lear and film it as Ran - there are cultural translation issues that make it appropriate to do so. But is reworking Jane Austen for the Buffy crowd really such a great idea? Will it satisfy either Buffy/Twilight fans or tried and true Austen fans? Or will there be (more) swooning from the pressure of corsets drawn too tight? (Actually, corsets were a Victorian thing, not a Regency thing - the one character who wears one in Dawn of the Dreadfuls is male - and it's called a truss. Reshaping and restraining blubber is still its chief purpose, however.)

Luckily, Dawn of the Dreadfuls actually has merit as a novel, although I was startled to discover this. It's not that I expected to hate it - I was intensely curious about it and leapt at the chance to get my hands on an advance review copy (ARC) when Raincoast Books, its Canadian distributor, offered them to bloggers via Twitter and the Raincoast blog. (The actual publisher is the quirky Quirk Books and its Quirk Classics series.) I just thought it would be an amusing read-in-one-sitting novel, like Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones' Diary and Melissa Bank's The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing.

In fact, Dawn of the Dreadfuls isn't as funny as I expected it would be (although there are definitely scenes that will translate to high comedic humour when/if it's filmed - as long as you aren't quite as terrified of zombies as I am - I barely made it through Night of the Living Dead once and don't care to repeat the experience - and ask my cousin how I used to awaken the entire household when we used to watch a 1960s TV show that featured zombies in the middle of the night - of course in that series zombie-killing methodology involved filling their mouths with salt and sewing them shut, and it was the needle through cartilage bit that always got to me, having been taught to sew buttons back on at age three).

The story begins about two weeks before Elizabeth Bennet, second-eldest of the five Longbourn-inhabiting Bennet daughters, is due to 'come out' in society at a local Meryton ball. Eldest sister Jane is already 'out' and has attracted the attention of Lord Lumpley, Netherfield-inhabiting baron (and libertine, according to middle Bennet sister Kitty, whose approach to life is highly analytical and academic in nature - this doesn't mean she's wrong, though). At the funeral of the local pharmacist, however, Meryton residents discover the scourge of the 'dreadfuls' (it's not polite to refer to them as zombies') isn't, in fact, over, despite the great battles of 30 years earlier (known as The Troubles). Relaxation of the burial laws means corpses have been buried in recent years with their heads still attached - and when you encounter one dreadful, it's only a matter of time before you meet a whole lot more of them.

Mr. Bennet was involved in the battles to defeat the dreadfuls 30 years earlier. They were defeated only as a result of intensive training in 'the dreadful arts' and as part of his training, Mr. Bennet has vowed to raise his children as warriors in the Shaolin way. Naturally, as the father of five girls married to Mrs. Bennet, who prevails in domestic matters through sheer volubility, he's broken his vow, and must now scramble to get his daughters trained so they can defend themselves and help put an end to the dreadfuls' scourge. 'Now far too belatedly, we begin your training. It will not be easy. You will be sorely tested. You will cry and bleed. You will face the derision, probably even the condemnation, of your community. Yet you will persevere on behalf of the very souls who now find you so ridiculous...for the dreadful scourge has returned, and once more warriors must walk the green fields of England!'

As the five Bennet girls embark on the path of the warrior, they encounter a variety of men. There is, of course, their 'master' Geoffrey Hawksworth, imported to train them in the warrior arts. There is the single-minded Lord Lumpley, who's managed to come up with a singularly effective method of disposing of the maidens he's ravished when they prove inconvenient (defined as no longer virginal or inconveniently pregnant while unsuitable for marriage), and who begins his days kicking gin bottles and maids out of his capacious (presumably four-poster) bed. There is the handsome but excessively proper Lt. Tindall, who struggles with his admiration for Jane while deploring her newly acquired prowess with the katana as she wields it to separate zombies from their heads. There is the quintessential absent-minded professor, Dr. Keckilpenny, whose inattention to detail and determinedly academic approach is in sharp contrast to Master Hawksworth's single-minded focus on practicalities.

Interestingly, Dawn of the Dreadfuls poses the question some of us have been asking ever since we first read Pride and Prejudice: how on earth did Mr. and Mrs. Bennet ever end up married to each other? Glimmers of an answer appear in the character of Capt. Cannon, who has lost all his limbs during The Troubles and is now wheeled around in a cart by two soldiers appropriately named Right Limb and Left Limb.

For me, Dawn of the Dreadfuls works because it manages to be sufficiently entertaining while actually conveying a substantive message or two, chief of which is, fathers form feminists by insisting they not be restricted by convention. Which is a message we don't hear often enough - although an earlier post on this blog took at look at how another popular (although less literary) series told an earlier generation of young women they could be whatever they wanted to be, avuncular pats on the head notwithstanding. And for more on Jane Austen's relevance to 21st Century women, there's this post.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls will be released to the (hopefully) suspecting public on March 23, 2010. Readers also have a chance to win one of 50 Quirk Classics Prize Packs - details on the contest here.

Olympic curmudgeonry

Potential readers of this post, I celebrate you. If you'd like to make a mosaic of your Twitter followers, click here.

Let me start by saying that I don’t get spectator sports and I don’t really understand why anyone would want to be an Olympic athlete. Let me continue by saying my heart sank when I heard Vancouver had won the 2010 Winter Olympics. Let me finish this portion of my post by saying one of the reasons I left BC in 2009 was because I don’t want to live in an Olympic host venue.

My worst fears have been confirmed, and the 2010 Olympics aren’t even over. So far we have had:

• one Georgian luge athlete killed.
• Two female Canadian luge athletes bitching about the fact that the course was changed (to make it safer for all) after the death of the Norwegian, thus impairing their performance.
• Allegations that we have been stingy with the training time we’ve allowed other athletes at the facilities we’ve constructed.
• As of Tuesday, February 16, 2010, CBC News reported that 28,000 ticket holders have been told they can’t use their standing room only tickets at Cypress Mountain for two days in a row because it’s unsafe – and there may be more cancellations of these tickets as more warm weather is expected this week.
• Horrendous lineups for concession stands and washrooms, also at Cypress.
• Delays, delays, delays and postponements due to weather. There’s a reason Whistler is no longer part of the FIS circuit – uncertain weather conditions, making it an unsuitable venue.
• Delays due to malfunctioning equipment at the Richmond Oval. Malfunctioning equipment at the Richmond Oval, which was one of the first new facilities finished for the 2010 Winter Olympics. We’ve been building skating rinks for how many years in this country? And somehow we can’t find rink maintenance machines that don’t ruin the ice and don't break down? Never fear, Calgary is now shipping its Zamboni by flatbed truck to the Richmond Oval, because theirs works.

The weather delays have caused serious problems for ticket holders who are now unable to get transportation to Whistler. Some people have had to leave town without seeing the events for which they bought tickets well over a year ago in an expensive lottery.

And then there’s the coverage by CTV, who outbid CBC for the right to be the official broadcaster. Not having watched much Olympic coverage in the past, perhaps I’m not in a position to judge. I’ve been astonished to discover that CTV isn’t interested in interviewing the gold medal winners at the Olympics – merely the Canadian participants, regardless of where they’ve placed in competition. I’ve also been astonished to discover that they’re showing snowboarding events three times in a single day (without benefit of a time stamp indicating that, contrary to what the announcer says, this is NOT a live event). Due to the delays at the Richmond Oval, CTV arbitrarily decided it wasn’t going to broadcast the pairs figure skating live program in its entirety and would stick to the speed skating events instead. The announcement was made long after it was possible to arrange to view on TSN at a friend’s house. I contemplated going to a bar to watch. And then I had to laugh at myself. What are the chances of getting to watch pairs figure skating at a sports bar? Yeah, right. Dream on.

As for the CTV web site: I have to download some Microsoft product in order to view archived footage on the site. And Chrome, the browser I use, isn’t mentioned as being compatible with the software. Oh – and only the gold and silver medal-winning pairs figure skating performances are up on the site.

And then there’s the truly inane filler. Saturday night (Feb. 13) CTV aired a piece on Whistler’s most eligible bachelor. Who wasn’t an athlete. Or an Olympian. Or even available – he’s having his first child with his partner. What does this have to do with the Olympics? Meanwhile, I watched three hours of CTV coverage Monday night (Feb. 15, 2010, from 11:30PM to 2:30AM) in an attempt to see some clips – or even hear the announcement – of who had won the pairs figure skating gold medal. Not one mention that the event had even taken place. Now I’m mad. Now I don’t just want to make sure CTV never gets the right to broadcast the Olympics again – I want their license to broadcast anything yanked.

CTV seems too lazy or too inept to even run a chart of events held and medals won as part of its news broadcasts – something the CBC excels at doing. Hire a computer graphics person and make use of them, CTV.

Let me make my position crystal clear here: if the Olympics are a competition amongst the world’s best athletes, patriotic boosterism is sadly misguided. And yet that’s what we’re getting. When I finally got to watch to the men’s short figure skating program Tuesday night, I was thrilled to see Canadians holding Canadian flags and cheering for American and Czech skaters who gave great, clean performances – and a Canadian journalist interviewing the Russian skater who’s leading after the short program. Finally – a celebration of the world’s best! I’m also glad a panel on CBC Radio One in Calgary this morning publicly decried the ‘own the podium’ mantra of the – well, I don’t know where it comes from – surely not the Canadian Olympic Committee? I certainly hope not. ‘Earn the podium’ is what it’s all about. Peter Mansbridge said last night on CBC TV news, 'Downtown [Vancouver] is a flowing river of patriotism.’ I think every Canadian should visit Vancouver if they get the chance. I think we should support our athletes too. Along with our writers, our scientists, our actors, our farmers, our intellectuals and our innovators. Let’s not break our arms patting ourselves on the back though.

For a brilliant suggestion on how to reduce the carbon footprint of the Olympics and perhaps help the events get back to the fundamentals of what they’re supposed to be about, read Jonathan Hiskes of Grist’s great article on greening the Olympics. Because winning the Olympics shouldn’t be what it takes to effect infrastructure improvements in our major urban centres, whether it’s transportation upgrades, badly needed facilities, or affordable housing.

Update: and for another perspective on what's going wrong, see The Guardian's Lawrence Donegan's round-up of coverage. Just ignore that bit about what you learn your first day in PR school - he's wrong on that front.