From our Canongate archives - Parody is crass and parasitical: discuss. American author and Austen scholar Arielle Eckstut here defends her new book, Pride and Promiscuity (reissued in 2010), from the challenges of English literary dame, AS Byatt.
Dear Dame Byatt,
I am honored and very much obliged to you, for your passionate critique of my book, Pride & Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen. I cannot express how grateful I am that a person of your stature stopped, nay stooped, to read a book like mine. And I hope you will understand that my tardy response to your critique was due solely to my fear of taking up your precious time with worthless thanks.
Let me say first and foremost, you were terribly generous to clarify the kind of work that would help me become a respected and intelligent writer. I am fully sensible that an original work, as opposed to a flea-like parody such as mine, would garner far more favorable reviews and the esteem of the literary and academic communities alike. But I am just as incapable of writing an original work as I am an award-winning novel replete with arcane references that fly over the heads of common persons such as myself. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious and superior sort of work even if someone were to put a gun to my head. And if that gun were cocked, I think I would probably be shot after only a sentence or two because I have so little ability to keep up the sort of rigorousness necessary for such a work. I am afraid I am in the horrible habit of laughing at and playing with life to excess, and must therefore choose to forge ahead in the parasitical world of parody, clumsily piggybacking on the works of truly great writers much as Pope, Swift and Wilde, unimaginative, blood-suckers that they were in their day. No, I must be true to myself and continue to produce crass, third-rate work that at most will do the base task of employing my readers sense of humor and at worst will add to the plethora of works that insult the imagination of readers worldwide. And while my success will most certainly be paltry, in attempting anything else I will be guaranteed to fail.
I remain, dear Madam,
Your much obliged and faithful servant,
A. Eckstut
[Austen aficionados might also spot the literary resonance here. The letter is based on one Jane Austen herself wrote to someone who was telling her how/what to write.]
Arielle Eckstut began her lifelong love affair with Jane Austen at the age of five. Since then she has written over 150 critical essays on the great authoress (although none, as of yet, have been published) and maintains one of the largest collections of authentic Austenian period costumes in Northern California. In her spare time Arielle is a literary agent with the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency.
