By K. A. Laity
There's something to be said for injecting new life into a mouldering corpse, as both Mary Shelley and Herbert West knew. However, it is usually best to wait until the body actually dies. While Jane Austen may not be dancing a hornpipe these days, her legacy is as sprightly as ever.
I know this book, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters -- and the one that preceded it and the ones that will inevitably follow it like mutant spawn or enchanted brooms -- is really at heart just a mash note of fondness for everyone's favourite Regency babe, but like the tentacled Colonel Brandon the Dashwoods first meet in its pages, it is difficult not to look away with a grimace.
Remember when mash-ups first hit? Wasn't it cool to hear "Paperback Believer" and "Smells Like Booty" or um, that one with Cher? Well, for a five minutes or so, it was cool. Video mash-ups, too -- they were popular for a while.
To paraphrase Lorelei Lee, I just love finding new ways to use technology. And we all stand on the uneven shoulders of giants, so swiping from others just figures as part of the creative conversation. T.S. "Cats" Eliot once wrote something about stealing being the sign of mature poets, but people tend to forget that he clarified that by adding:
"The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters slaps together a whole lot of Austen with a few tentacles of Lovecraft, a smidgen of Jaws, a splash of vaguely Gothic posturing, pirates and a little steampunk. A heady list of ingredients for what might have been a tasty gumbo.
But masher Ben H. Winters is not really much of a chef (apparently his chief attraction for the publishers was that he "happened to live across the street from them"). Pity. Let me be clear: This is not the "whining" of a purist for the sullying of her beloved Jane. I love Gothic, love Lovecraft, love pirates, and am not averse to steampunk. I don't shrink at gore, tentacles or messing about with classics. I steal all the time (literarily, that is).
The problem stems from the lack of cohesion. Winters wields a sledgehammer, Austen a fine needle (okay, maybe a knitting needle). While Sense and Sensibility was her first published book, the rapier sharpness of her observations and tart assessment of people was fully engaged, whether coolly dismissing a coxcomb or dissecting the absurd and excruciating dullness of a blindly doting mother.
Miss Dashwood offers Austen's withering clarity as she scrutinizes every character for their faults and values. When Elinor meets Robert Ferrars, her inspection proves unsparing and his grating faults serve to burnish the gloss of approval she awards his brother Edward.
Thus it is with the author of this volume. Side by side with Austen's lean prose and sharp wit, Winters comes off as awkward, garrulous and gauche. You can almost feel the pull of Austen's eyebrow arching in disbelief.
Winters points out the chief fault himself: "I equate the dangers of finding and losing love with the dangers of sea monster attacks." Toss Rosebud on the fire and put out the green light at the end of the dock! Metaphor is dead, or at least it is gasping for breath at the bottom of the stairs, clubbed from behind in the dark.
The magic of Austen -- and so many other great writers -- springs from their ability to articulate something ineffable vividly yet metaphorically, so it's imbibed through the skin and sinks into the bones. It's the difference between a goal and a holy grail. If we spell out a revelation like the answer to a standardized test, it's forgotten the minute that test booklet closes.
But novelty sells: next up, Android Karenina! I'm not going to be the one to say "Come in, number 15; your time's up" and I'm sure a little more juice can be squeezed from that lemon. Nonetheless, I wouldn't advise buying that fur-lined sink and the rocket car, Mr Winters.
Image via Quirk Books