I was inspired by Jacket Copy’s classic literature web movie and so put together one of my own using the simple (and free) online animated moviemaking tool xtranormal. Below is a video featuring part of a scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet–with the titular characters as robots. Xtranormal only has sterile, computer-generated voices to provide the dialogue, but in this context I’m thinking it kind of works.

After the jump, watch Jacket Copy’s Pride and Prejudice web video. Read more »

This whole classic-literature-meets-monsters trend keeps getting weirder and weirder. The latest mashup is Mrs. Darcy vs The Aliens, which author Jonathan Pinnock describes as:

Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens is a slightly demented sequel to Pride and Prejudice, although it has been described more accurately as “not so much Pride and Prejudice‘s sequel as its bastard offspring following a drunken one-night stand with the X-Files.”

Mostly, I like this idea because of the book trailer the author put together. It has Colin Firth in it, it’s in French, and it’s one of the weirdest book trailers I’ve ever seen.

If I could speak with one person dead or alive, I would want to chat with Jane Austen just so I could get her reaction to all these mashups. Given that she was apparently pretty risque and controversial in her day, I have a feeling she would think it all was a very good joke–what do you think?

Pride and Prejudice: the emoticon adaptation

On David Foster Wallace’s “scare quotes,” and the joys of editing him.

An essay on the quiet art of cartooning, which sounds quite a lot like the quiet art of writing fiction. Which I guess, technically, is the same thing. Via The Rumpus.

What contemporary literature will people still be reading a century from now?

Pride and Prejudice, as written in emoticons, via Booksquare.

Books are America’s fourth form of entertainment, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Even better news: there were more than four items on that list.

Why the novel will never die.

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