Fall is Falling

[hrj]

We’re having weather whiplash, as is usual for October. Saturday morning around 7:30 when I was getting into the car to go to Collegium, there were gusts of hot Santa Anna winds, muttering, “Firestorm, firestorm,” as they passed. Then today it was all about fog. I make no predictions for the moment; it could start raining any day.

Considering how disastrous Collegium could have been, it was not bad although sparsely attended (and extra props to those who pulled the chestnuts out of the fire even though it wasn’t their job). Couldn’t tell it was underattended from my class, since I maxed out on the hands-on limit of five and nearly maxed out on the auditor limit of another five. We didn’t get as much hands-on done as I hoped, since I’d designed the class for a 90 minute period and got a 60 minute one instead, but there was some additional spontaneous teaching throughout the day. I got inspired enough that yesterday I started writing out the detailed “how to do Birka wire-work” web site.

I got nearly caught up on my sleep Saturday night then spoiled it Sunday by giving in and letting the cat sleep with me … who proceeded to wake me up every few hours for repositioning, grooming, and digging through the trash basket. Saturday was also for shopping (including some frustrating gift-shopping), movie going (Marie Antoinette – don’t bother**), and getting caught up on the dishes (memo: must call plumber to get kitchen faucet replaced; controlling drips becomes even harder after the handle has come off and you’re maneuvering the ball-joint with an allen wrench and a rubber mallet).

**Marie Antoinette review: I went in understanding that the artistic “effect” was designed to be MA filtered through a 21st century trust-fund-chickie sensibility with a heavy layer of “poor little rich girl – such personal tragedy and besides how could she help it?” But I expected there to be some substance in there somewhere. No: let us eat cake. With lots of gooey frosting. The only thing that could possibly have redeemed it would have been showing the end-game, but of course they were out of time. To show it, they would have to have cut out some of the shoe-porn. Well, can’t say I was actually disappointed since I didn’t expect much of anything.

When I posted my semi-scathing review of Janet Aylmer’s “Darcy’s Story”, it had not yet been impressed on me that there has been an explosion of professionally published Pride and Prejudice fan-fic. I previously mentioned that I’ve been following Carrie Bebris's P&P + supernatural mystery series, about which I have decidedly mixed feelings. (I can’t help thinking that the combination of the two motifs is pure marketing ploy … on the other hand, it’s the sort of marketing ploy I’ve considered myself for one of my works in progress.) But somehow I had survived until yesterday without noticing that there are at least four non-mystery P&P-continuation series. To wit:

• Aidan, Pamela. An Assembly Such as This (Touchstone, May 2006) and two more books comprising a closely linked trilogy. Like Aylmer’s work, this seems to be primarily a re-telling of the original story but from Darcy’s point of view.


• Aston, Elizabeth. Mr. Darcy’s Daughters (Touchstone, May 2003) and at least two more books in a loosely-linked series. These seem to be “Pride and Prejudice: The Next Generation”. I’ve started on the first of the series and it seems to have avoided the biggest potential pitfalls by whisking our previous main characters off-stage and focusing on the fictitious (wait a minute, it’s all fictitious – but you know what I mean) offspring with some input from minor characters from the original work. So far I’m enjoying it simply as a historical romance, but we’ll see if it stands up as a good read on its own merits.


• Aylmer, Janet. Darcy’s Story (Harper Paperbacks, Aug 2006) As previously described. In detail.


• Berdoll, Linda. Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (Landmark, May 2004) and at least one further book. While Bebris cross-bred P&P fan-fiction with the supernatural (romantic) mystery genre, Berdoll has crossed it with the “racy romance” genre. The blurb promises hot and steamy … um, hot steam. It promises to pick up immediately after the wedding at the end of the original book. Based on the blurb, I feel no desired to explore this author further, as it gave no hints of any authorial additions other than explicit sexual content.

And then there are the ones I found when consulting Amazon.com to get publication data on the above:

• Dawkins, Jane. Letters from Pemberley: The First Year (Authors Choice Press, April 2003). An epistolary novel.


• Street, Mary. The Confession of Fitzwilliam Darcy (Robert Hale, 2003?) No further info.


• Tennant, Emma. Pemberley: Or, Pride and Prejudice Continued (St. Martin’s Press, December 1993) The earliest publication date for any of this brood that I’ve found yet.

A curious publication phenomenon. I see one repeat publisher in the batch (Touchstone – although given the interwovenness of publishers these days, there may be others that fall under the same mega-publishing umbrella), and with the exception of Tennant, it’s an explosion that starts in 2003 (the first of the Bebris mysteries came out in 2004).

No doubt this is all very old, stale new to the serious Austen devotees out there, but I’m having an amusing time analyzing the phenomenon.

Comments

[thread-walker.livejournal.com]

you are not the first friend to pan MA. so sad. I like Kirsten Dunst. And the trailers were very pretty.