Associate professors of English the world over are eagerly awaiting the April release of Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's masterwork: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Billed as "The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!", this is the first time that Ms. Austen, who has been dead herself since 1817, and Mr. Grahame-Smith, whose noted works include How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn, have combined their literary and exploitative powers. One can only hope that Sense and Sensibility and Satan is even now slouching toward Bethlehem.
But why stop there? There must be many other sacred cows of literature that are ripe for shameless subversion! The publisher of Austen and Grahame-Smith's flesh fresh derivative work cheerfully predicts it will introduce this classic novel "to a new legion of undead fans", so why let them have all the glory?
Here, then, without regard for copywrite or the bounds of good taste, are my top 10 other beloved works of literature and import that could stand the Grahame-Smith treatment:
"Skate Punk Pooh": The Hundred Acre Wood is now a housing development, but that doesn't stop the chubby little cubby from hanging with his homeboys and busting out their nups where Christopher Robin plays. Dag, Pooh gets some sick airfeet with that balloon!
"Wal-Den": Henry David Thoreau's pondside musings, reinterpreted as a paean to profit. The must-read manual for business tycoons looking to crush the competition and achieve global dominance. "Big is Beautiful!"
"The Grapes of Napa": Steinbeck's rags-to-riches epic of the Joad family, who rise above their dustbowl origins to live the good life as owners of a hugely profitable California winery. They hit it big with "Rose of Sharon Red" when Wine Spectator calls it the "Mother's Milk of Merlot" and the rest is history.
"Plato's Republican" : The Greeks gave us democracy, but they didn't give us Democrats! Take a walk on the Supply Side with the Philosoper King, and learn what 300 Spartans have to tell us about the importance of small government and a strong defense. Never mind tax reform, the G.O.P. needs to lay off the hemlock to be a lock in the next election.
"The Small and the Furry": Faulkner, with mice. "Caddy smelled like cheese."
"The Declaration of Co-Dependance": Sally Hemings' tutu! Revisionist historians reveal the Founders' feet of clay. Overcome with repressed guilt over that childhood "cherry tree incident", George Washington can never live up to his father yet becomes the Father of our Country! John Adams was the kid who always got picked on in school, and now he's gonna make his enemies pay. It's more than a 3/5 compromise with these dysfunctional founders. Hilarity ensures.
"Mob Edict" It's mutiny on the Pequod, as Ishmael and the crew pitch Captain Ahab overboard and hoist the Jolly Roger. The wayward whalemen descend into anarchy and the hunter becomes the hunted in an orgy of shipboard slaughter. Queequeg returns to his cannibal roots and Mr. Starbuck gets dark roasted. In the end, there can be only one.
"The Getty's Burkha: A Dress": What if Abraham Lincoln had been born a crossdressing Islamic fundamentalist? Would the South ever rise again? Inquiring neo-confederates want to know!
"Slaughterhouse None": Kurt Vonnegut's classic reimagined as a vegan manifesto. Co-authored with P.E.T.A.
"Happy Thoughts: The Inspirational Poems of Emily Dickinson": The feel-good poet of all time, Dickinson reminds us that nothing makes life seem so worth living as when we take the time to notice the little things, like the buzzing of a fly. With a new forward by Norman Vincent Peale.
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