3quarksdaily points to a mildly amusing piece at McSweeney’s: Famous Authors Predict the Winner of Super Bowl XLII. Ayn Rand, for example:
When he saw Bill Belichick in the hallway before the press conference, Tom Coughlin’s face contorted into a whine. “It isn’t fair!” he shrieked. “You have all the best players!” he whimpered. “What happened to helping your fellow man?!” he mewled. “You … all you care about is winning!” he sniveled.
The muscular coach set his prominent jaw, and his hard, handsome eyes glistened. “Why, Tom,” he asked with a smile, “isn’t winning what the NFL is all about?”
Sadly, the author went completely off the rails when it came time to write in the style of Jane Austen. Here is what we get:
Hyacinth and amethyst adorned the landscape of her heart, betrothed to fragrant oakmoss and blazing scarlet within the amorous lovestrokes of an incandescent horizon. In the shade of the gray branches, she put pen to paper. “I love you, Tom Brady,” it began. “Though others call you wicked.”
Um, what? Are there a large number of educated people out there, writing satirical pieces for hip web zines, who think that Jane Austen wrote some sort of Harlequin romances, presumably because she was female?
Here is a representative scene from an actual book written by Jane Austen — Darcy’s proposal to Elizabeth, from Pride and Prejudice:
After a silence of several minutes, he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began,
“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority — of its being a degradation — of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.
In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man’s affection, and though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said,
“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot — I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to any one. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.”
Dude, you have just been pwned. As the kids say. Jane Austen may have been many things, but a portrayer of hyacinth-adorned heart landscapes was not one of them. Next time, if you are going to parody a famous author, try reading one of their books first.
Context for post title here.
Yeah, that’s pretty sad. I guess maybe watching the way young girls get in to movie versions might give you that impression of Jane Austen. His passage reads a lot more like–but is of course still greatly inferior to–the Nausikaa book of Ulysses.
teeheehee I found it online.
The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old Howth, guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea.
Now that’s parody (albeit not of Jane Austen).
http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/ulysses/nausikaa.html
I see. It’s funny when they do authors we don’t like, off the rails when they do authors we do like.
It appears that you do not, actually, “see.”
I’m not familiar with Ayn Rand, so I can’t comment one way or another on that, but the criticism is right on with JA. P&P is my favorite book of all time and JA is required reading in many a high school and university. Do some research next time, buddy.
I agree with mike.
Don’t you love how fans of Ayn Rand and Ron Paul always crawl out of the woodwork to bitch about how underappreciated they are? It’s so endearing. No, not endearing, what’s the word — annoying.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a losing coach in possession of a good offensive line, must be in want of a running back.
(See, it’s not that hard.)
Losing football teams are all alike; winning football teams each win in their own way.
I saw the best football minds of my generation destroyed by madness, scowling hysterical sweatshirt-clad,
dragging themselves off the field at the final second looking for a Hail Mary six …
Losing football teams are all alike; winning football teams each win in their own way.
Ben is, apparently, doing Nabokov’s take on Tolstoy’s take on the Super Bowl.
Reader, I tackled him.
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I’ve never read P&P, but have seen the excellent A&E miniseries two or three times. I’m surprised that in the book she only *describes* Darcy’s proposal, giving none of his actual words. It makes me wonder how Austen handles the confrontation between Lizzie and Lady Catherine DeBerg.
You should read the book! Here is that scene.
Ouch!
Adjectives and noun modifiers:
From 5 lines of the football parody: fragrant, blazing, amorous, incandescent, gray.
From 38 lines of P&P: sufficient, family, favourable, real, good, short, little.
“That will make your ladyship’s situation at present more pitiable; but it will have no effect on me.”
Awesome. I do need to read it.
“In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could feel gratitude, I would now thank you. ”
Ummm….this crap *needs* a parody??
Well Sean, please post more about literature in the future, despite this mixed reaction. For every reader who leaves a silly comment–perhaps a member of that certain class of “science person” who just doesn’t get a thing about literature–maybe one “literature person” will read and realize that some scientists aren’t tasteless heathens after all (hopefully that person won’t see the comments).
Sam, don’t worry — I am notoriously unmoved by criticism in the comments! Well, misguided criticism, anyway.
The thing I can’t help noticing when reading Jane Austen or any other literature from that era is how intelligent the author expected his/her audience to be.
Trying to read the The Federalist Papers gave me a similar twinge. These books were expected to be read by the average literate person.
Most people today, even most smart people, would have a hard time getting through them. All those big damn words and long whaddycallem … sentences!
Damn, I feel like such a dummy. Think I’ll go turn on Wheel of Fortune and laugh at the goobers on it.
Well, bear in mind that literate people used to be a much smaller group than they are today. The barrier to literacy (the kind of literacy that enables one to read a novel) used to be a lot higher, and people who cleared it would almost certainly get the kind of classical education that we would consider demanding and scholarly.
That said, there’s no denying that novels used to be written in more ornate prose than they generally are today.
I’m guessing that the author of this piece has managed to muddle Austen and the Bronte sisters — not terribly surprising if one’s only exposure to either was in the same month of a particular high school English class. For example, here’s an excerpt from Wuthering Heights:
Happily, an inhabitant of the kitchen made more dispatch: a lusty dame, with tucked-up gown, bare arms, and fire-flushed cheeks, rushed into the midst of us flourishing a frying-pan: and used that weapon, and her tongue, to such purpose, that the storm subsided magically, and she only remained, heaving like a sea after a high wind, when her master entered on the scene.
“Lusty”, “fire-flushed”, “heaving” — this seems to be more the effect the author was seeking.
Nothing much to say except that I wish the brilliant Andy.S and Abigail were commenters on MY blog (LiveJournal), as they think along the same lines as I do. For some reason, the popular line for writers’ workshops today is that TODAY’S WAY OF DOING IT IS THE GOOD WAY and that all more-wordy ways or ways that aren’t in style at the moment are bad adn to be mocked. Granted, you won’t get published easily if you don’t write the way that the agents/editors think will sell right now, but that doesn’t mean that Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare, Milton, and all the greats whose work has endured from the past are not still great.
Parody is tough. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk–making something funny but still recognizable as the style of the author you’re parodying.
#16 not required; would you like a translation?
It may come as a shock to you, but people in previous generations wrote differently. That’s why the actors in period dramas – or Shakespeare – talk that way. Though that, of course, assumes you’ve seen a period drama.