Publisher To Release Sexier Versions Of Classic Books
via Huffington Post:
An adult-fiction publisher is planning to take literary classics like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Sherlock Holmes, and sexy them up for new audiences. Call it the Fifty Shades of Grey effect.
Claire Siemaszkiewicz, founder of Total-E-Bound Publishing, which is releasing the titles digitally on July 30, said:
We're not rewriting the classics. We're keeping the original prose and the author's voice. We're not changing any of that... But we want to enhance the novels by adding the 'missing' scenes for readers to enjoy.
Expect to see Jane Eyre have "explosive sex" with Mr. Rochester, and Sherlock get busy with his trusty sidekick, Dr. Watson.
Sherlock and Watson. It's a move that's not only completely contrary to the characters (Holmes is essentially asexual and there's no undertones of romance between the two in Doyle's work), but it completely disregards the wishes of the Doyle estate.
I've always sort of disliked people taking public domain works and remixing them. Sticking robots into Anna Karenina, in my opinion, cheapens the work, and it's not funny or clever, it's just kitsch. In fairness though, I've never read Android Karenina, so my opinion isn't entirely informed. Maybe it's good.
But this. I can't even. If I get started I'm never going to stop.
So let's hear from the peanut gallery. What do you think?
News by Rob W. Hart
Rob W. Hart is the class director at LitReactor, as well as the associate publisher for MysteriousPress.com. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, Crime Factory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir. He lives in New York City, and you can find his website at www.robwhart.com.
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"But we want to enhance the novels by adding the 'missing' scenes for readers to enjoy." Sure, but I have a feeling that most of the readers will never have read the original work. I say that because, from personal experience, many readers of "Fifty Shades" or "Twilight" had never read anything prior to that. So, is it a good thing that people, mainly young girls and women, are picking up books for the first time even though they are passing up on a chance to read the original classic? I don't know. My wife and I have had this discussion several times.
Somewhere in my house growing up was a treasury of National Lampoon humor. One of the best articles was an anthology of "If Classic Literature Included Gratuitous Sex Scenes." We all know comedy equals tragedy plus time: apparently reality is comedy plus time, too.
These better have awesome titles. That's all I've got.
The whole Holmes/Watson thing is just weird. Apparently Holmes and Watson are both bisexual? I thought Irene Adler was the great unfulfilled love of Holmes's life, and didn't Watson have two wives (in separate marriages at different times, of course)?
I honestly just don't care too much. I've got the original classics on my book shelves. These versions' existences will not change that. I've a feeling these won't prove as popular as the originals, anyway.
it irritates me that they're calling these "missing scenes." It makes it sound like they have found original material that was removed, and are adding it back in.
Why pay good money for this when you can get all the hot, Regency/ Victorian smut you could ever possibly want for free right over on fanfiction.net? Or even livejournal? I'm just sayin'....
Jesus jumped-up Christ on a pogo stick. The publishing industry is on its way to becoming as morally, ethically and intellectually bankrupt as Hollywood. Publish something new, you fucks.
I think it's just easier than having a whole new book written: "We'll take a pulic domain book with a name people might have heard before, put some sex in it and sell it." Altogether less work than writing a whole new erotic book, right?
I'm with JGB on this one. Can't anyone come up with something new? Hell, what you have here is erotic fiction derived from same idea that created Pride and Prejudice and Zombies combined with the eroticism currently on the market from 50 Shades of Grey, which itself was a bastardization of Twilight.
These books will be so derivitive, that I am pretty sure if you open one, the universe will collapse. Better off just not reading them. You wouldn't want the universe to collapse.
What, seriously? Is this actually happening? Okay, I understand maybe using new cover art as a marketing ploy, but to actually insert brand new scenes in classic literature? Just... I can't even...
And this coming from a Sherlock Holmes/John Watson slash fan. If I want to read it, I'll go find some fanfiction, thanks. There's honestly no need to tamper with the original canon.
I couldn’t agree more with Jeffrey Grant Barr and J. Y. Hopkins.
It is outrageously disappointing that the book industry is morphing into Hollywood for $$$$$$