So a woman I always thought of as a friend sent me a link to the HuffPost article about Total-E-Bound Publishing -- the ones who are doing the naughty rewrites of some classic works of literature. The only thing I can find to like about this story is that they're being completely honest. Print-form porn for women will sell if you can make it look reasonably classy, so we're hoping this will project will make a lot of money.
I flipped out about this, not because I object to porn but because I don't think the classics need help. Without having to try too hard, I found (and blogged about) ten hot scenes from old books. And no, I don't mean books like The Monk, which was specifically setting out to be as naughty as eighteenth-century-England possible. I mean books like Return of the Native and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey.
I'm still ticked, though. Because I still have some questions for good-God-do-I-hate-typing-their-name Total-E-Bound Publishing.
1. Why did you go on and on about Fifty Shades of Grey, without saying a word about Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Sure, you want to talk dirty; but Seth Grahame-Smith is the one whose coattails you're really riding.
2. Do the people in your PR department have any friends at all? If so, how did they get away with using the revolting phrase "explosive sex scenes"? Friends don't let friends type stupid.
3. So: were you up all night thinking of that idea that Sherlock Holmes and Watson are gay? I hate you because you can't be bothered to be the least bit original. I also know that I can't be the only straight girl out there who pined after Holmes exactly because he was so seemingly sexless. That aspect of his life just had to be in there somewhere. What would it take to light his fire? I don't want you or anyone else answering that question for me.
4. No one can argue against your premise that there's a lot of "underlying sexual tension" in novels like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. But Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea? Seriously? Seriously.
5. Cut it out with the "We'll be bringing the classics to a new generation of readers" bit. You may be fooling yourselves into believing that you're some sort of cultural ambassadors, but you're not fooling anyone else.
(I know that last one's not a question. When I just learned that they're turning Northanger Abbey into a porn novel, do you really expect me to care about details?)