Last Spring, I was one of the many searching the local booksellers for a copy of the runaway bestseller, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. What a hilarious idea: spruce up a stuffy old  Austen with some brain-eating undead. Give Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet a lovely set of ninja skills and set them out in defense the countryside from the shambling menace, in search of blood. The opening line is pure gold:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

I was sold, but it took me a while to track it down. Barnes and Noble was sold out. The people at the local Borders looked at me funny, and said they never heard of it. But I’m nothing if not persistent when it comes to tracking down Stuff, and I finally found it on its own table, with its own signage, with a truck load of other zombie related stuff. It had blown up. It was a huge success.

I flipped through my copy, laughing at the illustrations and opening to various chapters at random. The absurdity of the mash-up was gloriously surreal: actual Jane Austen prose peppered with action-filled gore, penned by a separate writer. I was so, so satisfied.

But I didn’t read it cover to cover. I don’t think I ever intended to. I looked at it as a curio, as a “conversation piece”, if you will. But I didn’t ever anticipate taking it seriously.

It was controversial. The literature snobs turned their noses up. They lamented the state of society, they called it sacrilege, they wept and beat their chests and rent their garments. That added to the fun, I must admit. But then, in rapid succession, from the small publisher that started the fun and some  copycat publishers, came…

Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters

Jane Slayre

Android Karenina

…and now Dickens is getting the treatment with Grave Expectations, due out next year, in which Pip is a werewolf and Estella is a slayer of supernatural creatures.

At the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy or a killjoy…

Seriously? When will this fad end? It needs to stop- and fast. It doesn’t take much to come up with a good “monster classic” pun, and with all due respect to the authors of these, what they’re adding to the original is nothing special. It can be very enjoyable in places, but this interlacing silly gore into the actual text of a classic reeks of a mere money-grab. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies felt fresh and fun. But now it’s just getting lame. And is anyone actually reading them? Or are most people, like me, buying them as a laugh and daring these lazy publishers to print more?

(Also, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will be a movie soon, with Scarlett Johansson as Elizabeth Bennett and Bradley Cooper as Mr. Darcy. Hold on, I need to rinse my mouth out. It tastes like throw-up a little. But I’ll probably see it, so who’s kidding who?)

Look, I understand that publishers would sell chewed Bubble Yum stuck to two index cards for $19.99 if that’s what the kids were into (so desperate are they to sell actual books), but I maintain that someone should just write an original, satirical, ironic 19th century novel that is redolent of the Brontes or Dickens and stick a shapeshifter or an android or whatever. But I know that’s much too much work.

So please. Don’t buy these books, and ask your friends not to buy them. Somebody please make them stop.

By the way, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is a brilliant book, written like an 19th century novel about rival English magicians. It’s a doorstopper, but it’s pure joy. And not at all a bland and effortless money-grab.