Would you read a XXX version of Jane Austen?

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

No.

[Jackie "the Librarian"]

I already have. I read Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife: Pride and Prejudice Continues, and takes her, and takes her...
You get the idea. It was not worth the read, sadly.

[Janice]

I might read it if it dropped into my lap. I wouldn't seek it out though.

[Stacia (the 2010 club)]

I would if there was a version that people were actually raving about.

[Phil]

I would not, but I do wonder how many people would end up reading it with just one hand.

[Stacia (the 2010 club)]

Not an impossible task with an ereader.

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Braille readers might.

[Janice]

One could always put the book down if needs be.

[[deleted user]]

Nah, I have a mountain of books in my TBR that I really would like to read. Surely a smutty version of any Jane Austen book would have to be set in a different time period. Were they even allowed to hold hands before marriage in those days?

[Lobstergirl, el principe]

Depends what social class you were in. The farm laborers were having sex with each other in haystacks by age 10. Men of the upper classes were having sex with prostitutes, but a lady wouldn't want to tarnish herself before marriage.

[Shannon]

I'd have to say no. I'm having enough trouble with P&P without trying to read a new interpretation of it.

[Helena]

No, I wouldn't read this.

But I did read this:

The Crimson Petal and the White

Which I thought was a pretty decent look at 'real' Victorian society- the liberties afforded to gentlemen and restrictions placed on women through the eyes of a Victorian prostitute. Great book.

[[deleted user]]

Sounds like a very good deal to me. Now why did we change that?

[~Geektastic~]

For the most part, I have studiously avoided sequels and re-writes of Jane Austen's books. I tried P&P and Zombies, but it was terrible; I only got a few pages in before I realized it was just a lazy hack using someone else's genius to sell a poorly executed gimmick. I did read Darcy's Story, which wasn't great (and also wasn't racy in the least) but not so terrible that I couldn't finish it. I have one other sequel sitting on my shelf,Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen ; it's said to be the first ever, published in 1914 and covering not just one of Austen's books, but several all at once. I haven't brought myself to actually read it yet.

I say, if you feel like reinterpreting classics, go right ahead, but I won't treat them as anything but fan fiction and 99 times out of 100, you won't be getting my money for the privilege of reading your generally sub-par attempt. Adding sex scenes is not as creative as these thieves writers seem to think, and no one has been able to capture the wit and irony of Austen's authorial voice without just lifting her original text and throwing their own nonsense in. Often, they just lift character names and plot points, and it comes off very flat without that Austen sparkle.

There are exceptions to my reinterpretation rule,of course, like Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, but they are few and far between.

[Sarah]

I wouldn't bother, just as I haven't read any of the book-and-monster books. There's enough good stuff out there that I don't need to waste my time on derivative gimmicks.

[~Geektastic~]

Misha wrote: "First off, I have absolutely no interest in reading the smutty Jane Austen. Personally, I'm rather tired of seeing "classic work of literature told from another point of view" novels and the monste..."

I don't think they're sacrosanct, just because I don't believe any work of art is. To set the classics on some untouchable pedestal would cripple writers who could do something truly magical with the material and give it a new life. The successes are rare, but every once in a while someone takes a chance and hits it out of the park. I guess it also depends on how heavily the interpreting writer relies on the original text vs. their own ideas.

[Sarah]

I don't think they are sacrosanct, but there's a difference between lifting a theme or a plot and lifting the theme, plot, and characters. I think updated plots can be fun - see Clueless or Ten Things I Hate About You. And every Shakespeare company decides what era they'll set it in, whether there will be any casting conceits, etc. Adaptations.

I think some of the told-from-another-POV or character-from-work-displaced can be very fun as well. There is a hilarious series of Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy gay spoofs. Old characters, new words, new perspective.

What I find lazy and gimmicky is the near verbatim use of one work of fiction to sell another. The works with the double byline "Jane Austen and ____." The first one was a funny concept (though I don't do zombies so I didn't read it). After that it's just sales and laziness as far as I'm concerned.

[Sarah]

I think the first one of this batch with the zombies was a funny idea and contextually clever. But the second it took off, that publisher lined up hacks to bash out thirty more variations, each of which seems farther fetched than the last.

[~Geektastic~]

BunWat wrote: "Well I definitely agree that there's nothing at all wrong with a good retelling, and literature ought not to be sacrosanct. In fact I think its all material to be mixed up and re envisioned and ri..."

I think it almost always comes down to money. One success breeds a bunch of failures because everyone is trying to, as you said, cash in on a passing fad. Although I think the first mash-up (zombies) was a colossal failure from a literary standpoint, so the ensuing popularity is unwarranted anyway. The idea may have been clever, but I think the execution was terrible.

[Jackie "the Librarian"]

That's cute, but the hero should be Princess Benn'ett, not D'arcy, on a quest that takes her to the Lake District...

[Louise]

BunWat wrote: "Well I definitely agree that there's nothing at all wrong with a good retelling, and literature ought not to be sacrosanct. In fact I think its all material to be mixed up and re envisioned and ri..."

What Bunwat says, it's fine to do retellings, but I sometimes get the feeling, that writers without enough talent to write something of their own, will do a poor retelling over some weird theme.
That being said, when it's done with a creative purpose, it can be very entertaining :-)

[Jammies]

I read and enjoyed Pride and Promiscuity : The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen Parody , which is intended to be humorous, but that's about the extent of my interest in smutty versions of classics. If I'm going to read smut, I will read carefully crafted, well-written smut that doesn't exist solely to make a buck for the author.