Teacher seeks to solve mystery of 200-year-old Jane Austen book, It takes aplomb — some ability even say airs — to carbon one of the a lot of admired novels in the English canon.
So Curtis Sittenfeld was able for a backfire if chat got out that she was autograph a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s archetypal “Pride and Prejudice.” The acknowledgment from some die-hard Austen admirers was abrupt and predictably brutal.
“There accept been some aboriginal reviews that say, ‘Curtis Sittenfeld is no Jane Austen,’” Ms. Sittenfeld said. “And I’m like, ‘Clearly.’”
Ms. Sittenfeld, columnist of the acknowledged novels “Prep” and “American Wife,” seems about abashed if discussing the alarming assignment she had set for herself. Her atypical “Eligible,” which Random House will absolution on Tuesday, is the latest book in the Austen Project, a alternation that pairs abreast novelists with Austen’s six works. So far, there accept been versions of “Emma,” by Alexander McCall Smith; “Northanger Abbey,” by the Scottish abomination biographer Val McDermid; and “Sense & Sensibility,” by Joanna Trollope.
But afterlight “Pride and Prejudice” poses a different challenge. Of all of Austen’s works, it is far and abroad the a lot of popular. It has been acclimatized into dozens of aftereffect books, including annihilation mysteries (P. D. James’s ashen “Death Comes to Pemberley”), soft-core affair novels (the aboveboard abominable “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife,” by Linda Berdoll) and abhorrence belief (Seth Grahame-Smith’s blood-soaked apology “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”). There are “Pride and Prejudice”-theme books for every age accumulation and demographic, including cookbooks, actualization books, adolescent developed novels, lath books for toddlers and banana books.
“The characters and artifice are affectionate of in our air and baptize by now,” said Juliette Wells, columnist of “Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Accepted Imagination.”
So what led Ms. Sittenfeld, 40, an acclaimed biographer who has appear four beforehand novels, to access the hypersaturated bazaar for Jane Austen fan fiction?
Continue account the capital story
RELATED COVERAGE
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Eligible’ Updates Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ APRIL 11, 2016
Jane Austen and Shakespeare, for the 21st Century APRIL 14, 2016
Like millions of added readers, she happens to be a huge Austen fan. And while she knew that afterlight “Pride and Prejudice” was professionally risky, she was apprenticed partly by the aforementioned actuation that accountable adherent Austenphiles to reread the atypical dozens of times: She capital to absorb added time with the characters.
“I see ‘Eligible’ as a homage, and I see ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as a absolute book,” she said. “You can altercation whether this activity is a acceptable idea, but you can’t altercation my amore for the novel.”
As if to prove the abyss of her affection, Ms. Sittenfeld acclaimed during a contempo account at a Midtown Manhattan bistro that she was accustomed a archetype of the atypical in her purse, “in case we accept a ‘Pride and Prejudice’ emergency,” she explained. “You never know.”
There were no emergencies. But it bound became axiomatic that Ms. Sittenfeld could apparently handle any burning “Pride and Prejudice” questions afterwards consulting the source. She added or beneath committed the artifice to anamnesis if she anxiously mapped out the novel’s 61 chapters, in an accomplishment to actualize a adapt of sorts for her own version.
Like the 1813 original, Ms. Sittenfeld’s atypical actualization a bullheaded charlatan called Elizabeth Bennet, whose nervous, ascendant mother is bedeviled with marrying off her and her sisters. Lizzy’s vapid, amorous adolescent siblings, Kitty and Lydia, are an embarrassment to the family, while her earlier sister, Jane, is abutting spinsterhood. A affluent individual man, Bingley, comes to boondocks and takes a affection to Jane, while Lizzy takes an burning animosity to Bingley’s even richer friend, the above Fitzwilliam Darcy. Of course, Lizzy and Darcy eventually apprehend that they are absolute for ceremony other.
“Eligible” unfolds in 2013 in Cincinnati, area Liz, a announcer for a women’s magazine, and Jane, a yoga instructor, accept alternate home afterwards their ancestor has suffered a affection attack. Bingley, the handsome begat of a affluent bounded family, is in boondocks beating his wounds afterwards a base actualization on “Eligible,” a “Bachelor”-like absoluteness dating show. Darcy is a aloof neurosurgeon, who strikes Liz as unbearably condescending.
The atypical has already accepted polarizing a allotment of Austen fans. “Sadly disappointing, this book is just aggravating to banknote in on the acceptance of Austen’s characters,” one affronted clairvoyant wrote on Goodreads. A analyzer for Kirkus Reviews warned, “Don’t apprehend to get the aforementioned akin of romantics and Darcy-inflicted collapse that accomplish the aboriginal untouchable.”
But others accept accepted Ms. Sittenfeld for channeling Austen’s bitter wit and acid observations about gender, chic and money, and for putting her own abusive circuit on the around-the-clock plot.
“Reboots are abundantly tricky, and about the alone affair that would abet me to apprehend a reboot of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is Curtis Sittenfeld’s name on the cover,” Rebecca Mead, a biographer for The New Yorker, said in an email.
Certainly, Ms. Sittenfeld and her idol allotment bits of arcane DNA. Both address novels of amenities featuring acute changeable protagonists who attempt to cross the accountability curve of gender identity, courting and amusing class, capacity Ms. Sittenfeld explored in her 2005 admission novel, “Prep.”
Ms. Sittenfeld aswell shares some of the heroine’s backbone and dry humor, as able-bodied as her aboriginal name. (Her abounding name is Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld.) She grew up in Cincinnati, area her mother accomplished art history and formed as a academy librarian, and her ancestor was an investment adviser. She abounding Groton, the Massachusetts boarding school, an acquaintance she drew on for “Prep.” She was a inferior there if she aboriginal apprehend “Pride and Prejudice.”
“It contains the best adaptation of all the things Austen does well,” she said. “The chat is magnificent; the amusement is so sharp; the annotation on chic is so astute.”
Initially, if an editor from Borough Press, an banner of HarperCollins U.K., approached Ms. Sittenfeld in 2011 about afterlight the atypical as allotment of the Austen Project, she was skeptical.
“I wondered if it would be cheesy,” said Ms. Sittenfeld, who lives in St. Louis. “But you can’t reside your activity annoying about getting cheesy.”
At first, she approved to address a scene-for-scene account of Austen’s atypical but begin the action too constricting. She accomplished that it would be unrealistic for Darcy to adduce to Liz afore they had even dated, so she has them appoint in no-strings-attached “hate sex.” She makes Liz 38, rather than 20, an absurdly adolescent age for a abreast woman to anguish about her conjugal status. And she breach one of Austen’s aboriginal characters, the absorbing but artful Wickham, into two characters: Jasper Wick, a affiliated rogue who has been stringing Liz along, and Ham, a transgender man who is Lydia’s boyfriend.
While Ms. Sittenfeld risks acrimony Austen purists — the accidental sex has already acquired a baby uproar — her looser access aswell separates “Eligible” from other, beneath acknowledged Austen updates that were unswervingly loyal to the aboriginal stories.
“One of the pitfalls these books abatement into is getting too affectionate to Jane Austen,” said Deborah Yaffe, columnist of “Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom.” “Not anybody is an barnyard customer of annihilation that has Jane Austen’s name on it.”
Lately, there accept been broadcast signs of Austen fatigue. Sales for some contempo Austen updates accept been tepid. Ms. Trollope’s modern-day “Sense & Sensibility,” which was appear in 2013, has awash just 5,100 copies in the United States, while Ms. McDermid’s abreast yield on “Northanger Abbey” awash just 2,800 copies here, according to Nielsen, which advance about 85 percent of book book sales.
But the Jane Austen Industrial Complex still seems appealing robust. Next year is the 200th ceremony of Austen’s death, and advisers and writers are commemorating the break with a blast of bookish books, conferences and exhibitions, and a scattering of new Austen-derived novels.
Writers and filmmakers are digging added into Austen’s physique of plan to acquisition “fresh” actual a allotment of her aboriginal novellas, amateurish belief and juvenilia. Next month, Little, Brown and Company will broadcast Whit Stillman’s atypical “Love & Friendship,” which is based on “Lady Susan,” Austen’s abstruse epistolary novella. Mr. Stillman, who has aswell acclimatized the book into a accessible affection film, said he chose “Lady Susan” because it acquainted beginning and almost untapped.
“There are humans groaning about all the Jane Austen adaptations,” Mr. Stillman said in an interview. “This was something at the top shelf, communicable dust.”
Even Ms. Sittenfeld seems a little alert of alleviative Austen too abundant like a arcane aureate goose. A few months ago, she tweeted, “I admiration if Jane Austen anytime feels like we yield and yield and never give.”
So Curtis Sittenfeld was able for a backfire if chat got out that she was autograph a modern-day adaptation of Jane Austen’s archetypal “Pride and Prejudice.” The acknowledgment from some die-hard Austen admirers was abrupt and predictably brutal.
 |
| Teacher seeks to solve mystery of 200-year-old Jane Austen book |
“There accept been some aboriginal reviews that say, ‘Curtis Sittenfeld is no Jane Austen,’” Ms. Sittenfeld said. “And I’m like, ‘Clearly.’”
Ms. Sittenfeld, columnist of the acknowledged novels “Prep” and “American Wife,” seems about abashed if discussing the alarming assignment she had set for herself. Her atypical “Eligible,” which Random House will absolution on Tuesday, is the latest book in the Austen Project, a alternation that pairs abreast novelists with Austen’s six works. So far, there accept been versions of “Emma,” by Alexander McCall Smith; “Northanger Abbey,” by the Scottish abomination biographer Val McDermid; and “Sense & Sensibility,” by Joanna Trollope.
But afterlight “Pride and Prejudice” poses a different challenge. Of all of Austen’s works, it is far and abroad the a lot of popular. It has been acclimatized into dozens of aftereffect books, including annihilation mysteries (P. D. James’s ashen “Death Comes to Pemberley”), soft-core affair novels (the aboveboard abominable “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife,” by Linda Berdoll) and abhorrence belief (Seth Grahame-Smith’s blood-soaked apology “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”). There are “Pride and Prejudice”-theme books for every age accumulation and demographic, including cookbooks, actualization books, adolescent developed novels, lath books for toddlers and banana books.
“The characters and artifice are affectionate of in our air and baptize by now,” said Juliette Wells, columnist of “Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Accepted Imagination.”
So what led Ms. Sittenfeld, 40, an acclaimed biographer who has appear four beforehand novels, to access the hypersaturated bazaar for Jane Austen fan fiction?
Continue account the capital story
RELATED COVERAGE
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
Curtis Sittenfeld’s ‘Eligible’ Updates Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ APRIL 11, 2016
Jane Austen and Shakespeare, for the 21st Century APRIL 14, 2016
Like millions of added readers, she happens to be a huge Austen fan. And while she knew that afterlight “Pride and Prejudice” was professionally risky, she was apprenticed partly by the aforementioned actuation that accountable adherent Austenphiles to reread the atypical dozens of times: She capital to absorb added time with the characters.
“I see ‘Eligible’ as a homage, and I see ‘Pride and Prejudice’ as a absolute book,” she said. “You can altercation whether this activity is a acceptable idea, but you can’t altercation my amore for the novel.”
As if to prove the abyss of her affection, Ms. Sittenfeld acclaimed during a contempo account at a Midtown Manhattan bistro that she was accustomed a archetype of the atypical in her purse, “in case we accept a ‘Pride and Prejudice’ emergency,” she explained. “You never know.”
There were no emergencies. But it bound became axiomatic that Ms. Sittenfeld could apparently handle any burning “Pride and Prejudice” questions afterwards consulting the source. She added or beneath committed the artifice to anamnesis if she anxiously mapped out the novel’s 61 chapters, in an accomplishment to actualize a adapt of sorts for her own version.
Like the 1813 original, Ms. Sittenfeld’s atypical actualization a bullheaded charlatan called Elizabeth Bennet, whose nervous, ascendant mother is bedeviled with marrying off her and her sisters. Lizzy’s vapid, amorous adolescent siblings, Kitty and Lydia, are an embarrassment to the family, while her earlier sister, Jane, is abutting spinsterhood. A affluent individual man, Bingley, comes to boondocks and takes a affection to Jane, while Lizzy takes an burning animosity to Bingley’s even richer friend, the above Fitzwilliam Darcy. Of course, Lizzy and Darcy eventually apprehend that they are absolute for ceremony other.
“Eligible” unfolds in 2013 in Cincinnati, area Liz, a announcer for a women’s magazine, and Jane, a yoga instructor, accept alternate home afterwards their ancestor has suffered a affection attack. Bingley, the handsome begat of a affluent bounded family, is in boondocks beating his wounds afterwards a base actualization on “Eligible,” a “Bachelor”-like absoluteness dating show. Darcy is a aloof neurosurgeon, who strikes Liz as unbearably condescending.
The atypical has already accepted polarizing a allotment of Austen fans. “Sadly disappointing, this book is just aggravating to banknote in on the acceptance of Austen’s characters,” one affronted clairvoyant wrote on Goodreads. A analyzer for Kirkus Reviews warned, “Don’t apprehend to get the aforementioned akin of romantics and Darcy-inflicted collapse that accomplish the aboriginal untouchable.”
But others accept accepted Ms. Sittenfeld for channeling Austen’s bitter wit and acid observations about gender, chic and money, and for putting her own abusive circuit on the around-the-clock plot.
“Reboots are abundantly tricky, and about the alone affair that would abet me to apprehend a reboot of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ is Curtis Sittenfeld’s name on the cover,” Rebecca Mead, a biographer for The New Yorker, said in an email.
Certainly, Ms. Sittenfeld and her idol allotment bits of arcane DNA. Both address novels of amenities featuring acute changeable protagonists who attempt to cross the accountability curve of gender identity, courting and amusing class, capacity Ms. Sittenfeld explored in her 2005 admission novel, “Prep.”
Ms. Sittenfeld aswell shares some of the heroine’s backbone and dry humor, as able-bodied as her aboriginal name. (Her abounding name is Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld.) She grew up in Cincinnati, area her mother accomplished art history and formed as a academy librarian, and her ancestor was an investment adviser. She abounding Groton, the Massachusetts boarding school, an acquaintance she drew on for “Prep.” She was a inferior there if she aboriginal apprehend “Pride and Prejudice.”
“It contains the best adaptation of all the things Austen does well,” she said. “The chat is magnificent; the amusement is so sharp; the annotation on chic is so astute.”
Initially, if an editor from Borough Press, an banner of HarperCollins U.K., approached Ms. Sittenfeld in 2011 about afterlight the atypical as allotment of the Austen Project, she was skeptical.
“I wondered if it would be cheesy,” said Ms. Sittenfeld, who lives in St. Louis. “But you can’t reside your activity annoying about getting cheesy.”
At first, she approved to address a scene-for-scene account of Austen’s atypical but begin the action too constricting. She accomplished that it would be unrealistic for Darcy to adduce to Liz afore they had even dated, so she has them appoint in no-strings-attached “hate sex.” She makes Liz 38, rather than 20, an absurdly adolescent age for a abreast woman to anguish about her conjugal status. And she breach one of Austen’s aboriginal characters, the absorbing but artful Wickham, into two characters: Jasper Wick, a affiliated rogue who has been stringing Liz along, and Ham, a transgender man who is Lydia’s boyfriend.
While Ms. Sittenfeld risks acrimony Austen purists — the accidental sex has already acquired a baby uproar — her looser access aswell separates “Eligible” from other, beneath acknowledged Austen updates that were unswervingly loyal to the aboriginal stories.
“One of the pitfalls these books abatement into is getting too affectionate to Jane Austen,” said Deborah Yaffe, columnist of “Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom.” “Not anybody is an barnyard customer of annihilation that has Jane Austen’s name on it.”
Lately, there accept been broadcast signs of Austen fatigue. Sales for some contempo Austen updates accept been tepid. Ms. Trollope’s modern-day “Sense & Sensibility,” which was appear in 2013, has awash just 5,100 copies in the United States, while Ms. McDermid’s abreast yield on “Northanger Abbey” awash just 2,800 copies here, according to Nielsen, which advance about 85 percent of book book sales.
But the Jane Austen Industrial Complex still seems appealing robust. Next year is the 200th ceremony of Austen’s death, and advisers and writers are commemorating the break with a blast of bookish books, conferences and exhibitions, and a scattering of new Austen-derived novels.
Writers and filmmakers are digging added into Austen’s physique of plan to acquisition “fresh” actual a allotment of her aboriginal novellas, amateurish belief and juvenilia. Next month, Little, Brown and Company will broadcast Whit Stillman’s atypical “Love & Friendship,” which is based on “Lady Susan,” Austen’s abstruse epistolary novella. Mr. Stillman, who has aswell acclimatized the book into a accessible affection film, said he chose “Lady Susan” because it acquainted beginning and almost untapped.
“There are humans groaning about all the Jane Austen adaptations,” Mr. Stillman said in an interview. “This was something at the top shelf, communicable dust.”
Even Ms. Sittenfeld seems a little alert of alleviative Austen too abundant like a arcane aureate goose. A few months ago, she tweeted, “I admiration if Jane Austen anytime feels like we yield and yield and never give.”
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