'Pride' offers glimmers of humor

Picture the pastoral scenes of the English countryside, where ladies and gentlemen blush at balls and gossip at dinner, while wearing their latest finery from London and France. This is the world of Jane Austen, where love always seems to work itself out and the "nice" characters always get their happy endings.\nSex is the last thing you would expect to enter this landscape, but that's exactly what a new book -- "Pride and Promiscuity: the Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen" -- brings to the table.\nArielle Eckstut and Dennis Ashton, the authors, set themselves up as amateur Austen scholars who discover a box of the late author's lost sex scenes, rejected by publishers as indecent.\nThe premise is weak, at best, but then, the book never really tries to convince readers of its legitimacy. The only attempt is a few "letters" from Austen to friends, showing her outrage at being forced to remove the scenes. It's a farce, and the reader knows it, but readers will be anxious to see just how the authors will pull this off.\nParts of this book are genuinely funny, especially the "introduction" by a "renowned scholar" who has been called upon to "authenticate" the sex scenes. The scholar describes the letter she receives from the authors, requesting her help: "It was from a pair of Americans living in New York City and apparently eking out a living as some sort of lower-echelon literary hangers-on -- agents and/or freelance writers. You can imagine the type, and will no doubt be unsurprised to learn that they were also raging Anglophiles, of the Masterpiece Theatre-watching, Typhoo-drinking sort."\nThe rest of the introduction continues in a similar fashion and had me laughing out loud.\nThe book contains scenes supposedly from all of Austen's novels, including "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility" and "Emma." After the build-up of preface, introduction and Austen's letters, the reader is ready for a clever twist on the plots and characters of Austen's novels.\nAnd in fact, the authors try. Each "scene" is inserted into the middle of a text; the reader could pick up an Austen novel, find the scene and then insert "Pride and Promiscuity's" sex scene right in the middle. But the writing style is different; the scene and the novel won't quite match.\nIt's interesting, funny and irreverent at first, but it soon starts to wear thin. While the scenes are sometimes a bit clever, and sometimes make good use of Austen's characters and their interactions, the book overall seems like a laundry list of sexual proclivities. Although the book is never graphic, there is a scene for everyone -- bondage, role playing, incest, bestiality, orgies, gays, masturbation, sex outdoors and even sex in a boat. This is not as interesting as it sounds; by the end, readers might wonder why they have been subjected to a book that is just sex for sex's sake.\nAlthough "Pride and Promiscuity" is a quick and easy read, it is ultimately unsettling to Austen fans, who know deep down these scenes do not match Austen's style. Anyone not familiar with Austen's work will miss the clever twists of character and plot that redeem the book. It might best be used as a sort of reader's companion for those who've read Austen's novels a few times already; read the scene at the right time in the novel for an interesting and funny take on the characters and plot, even though the styles won't match.\n"Pride and Promiscuity" has a few glimmering moments of irreverent hilarity. But the premise soon wears thin. Although Eckstut and Ashton obviously understand the characters and plot of Austen's novels, they cannot recreate her writing style well enough to allow knowledgeable readers to suspend their disbelief.