SBD -- Nothing new under the sun

I don't have a rant or a piece of insight to share for Smart Bitch Monday, just a gripe.

There are no new stories, just new ways of telling them. I'm not sure if that is a truism or I should be crediting someone for a quotation. That explains why there are paradigms or archetypes or patterns in literature. And by extension, in romance. In the end (like the earth) everything just gets recycled, right? While recycling is a good idea generally, there is something to be said for original thought.

I know that other stuff is getting published, but really, couldn't modern writers give the poor Jane Austen a break? I love her books, but I'm pretty much JA'd out. Carrie Bebris has a sort of paranormal mystery series; Stephanie Barron has Jane Austen mysteries; Linda Berdoll has Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife and Darcy & Elizabeth; there is at least one series that begins with Mr. Darcy's Daughters or a similar title. The Man Who Loved Jane Austen. The Jane Austen Book Club. Enough already!

And JA is hardly alone. I read the bookflap of Wuthering High today, a YA book that seems to involve classic lit plots superimposed onto modern life. Jasper Fforde created a world in which people can jump into literary texts and change their outcomes, and literary characters intereact with Thursday Next. BBC America is broadcasting "Shakespeare: Told" (with the play on works Shakespeare Retold) -- Much Ado About Nothing this week, Macbeth next week.

I love Shakespeare (although the BBC version doesn't hold a candle to the Emma Thompson-Kenneth Branagh version of Much Ado, imo) and JA, but please, authors, find something else to "borrow" from. Recycle Don Quijote (wouldn't an honorable hero, however cracked, be cool to read about?). Or Ivanhoe (for those readers who like the idea of a tortured bad guy who might maybe possibly be redeemed by love in the end, but redeemed too late).

What other classic books -- other than Jane Austen -- can you see rewritten as modern genre romances?

Further to the recycling theme

Cleaned out more stuff from the Closet o' Junk at Mom's house -- there are a couple of boxes of books and notebooks from college left over. The box I brought home to go through included Spanish & Russian texts, along with some English stuff. I'd forgotten about some of this stuff -- what a walk down memory lane. Had a writing instructor for composition who made us write imitations of passages by famous authors. Didn't have time (and in theory wasn't supposed to need) to teach grammar or sentence structure, so the imitations were his way of working on grammar and getting a little bit of writing out of us. We had to use the same number of modifying clauses, punctuation, etc., then we would circulate them and critique them.

I'm looking at the grades written on them and wondering what the curve was, because these read as stiff as cardboard. ::sigh:: Writing anything other than a straight up research paper was always my weak spot. I lack imagination and a writing style.

Here's one, based on the longest freakin' sentence I can remember reading outside of a legal agreement:

Once the playground was the place for all the children to romp; Every day of the school year they played out there; everyone laughing and playing during recess, and before and after school; there were kids who always jumped rope, chanting and hopping while watching the rest of the playground; even when it snowed children went out there, then the romping was delightful - with angels and snowmen and snowballs, too; in the spring and summer days there was kickball on the black top, and then the children got to kick and run and laugh around the bases; the older kids at the middle school stared and thought them silly, but the teachers watched fondly, standing in a group by the school-building amazed by them as they frolicked among their groups in brightly colored clothes, with arms swinging and legs pumping to the rhythm of the ropes, feet pounding away on the hard-packed earth of the playground, sometimes screaming with laughter, sometimes gasping frantically for breath, even turning to see their pursuer then diving behind the sliding board hiding from whoever was "it", or waiting (hoping they'd forget) to hear the ringing of the little bells of their teachers, huddled with their rosey-cheeked friends, every once in a while giggling with glee.

Any guesses about what long-a$$ sentence that was modelled after? If you can tell me what passage it is in imitation of, you'll win a prize: either ebook or mmp, haven't decided which yet. I don't think it's that obscure, but if no one guesses the title (or at least the author), I'll select one post/guess at random. Hint about author: think big bugs.