Writers influenced by other writers
An article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel discusses writers who use dead writers’ work as their inspiration. The article brings up both The Jane Austen Book Club:
Although plenty of current books play off the work of dead writers, they’re not all cannibalistic. In some, authors are merely touchstones. The Jane Austen Book Club, set in contemporary California, uses conversations about Austen’s work as an excuse for its characters’ wailing about families and feelings; this middlebrow chick-lit owes more to Dr. Phil than to Pride and Prejudice.
…and, in rather less complimentary terms, of every Austen fan’s favorite, Emma Tennant:
Tennant alone is a one-woman literary cannibal tour. Before Sylvia and Ted appeared in 2001, she had written several sequels to Austen books, a novel based on a minor character from Jane Eyre and a memoir recalling her own affair with Ted Hughes.
We write, naturally, with tongue firmly tucked in cheek.
