Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters

by Mallory Ortberg

Overview

Hilariously imagined text conversations—the passive aggressive, the clever, and the strange—from classic and modern literary figures, from Scarlett O'Hara to Jessica Wakefield
Mallory Ortberg, the co-creator of the cult-favorite website The Toast, presents this whimsical collection of hysterical text conversations from your favorite literary characters. Everyone knows that if Scarlett O'Hara had an unlimited text-and-data plan, she'd constantly try to tempt Ashley away from Melanie with suggestive messages. If Mr. Rochester could text Jane Eyre, his ardent missives would obviously be in all-caps. And Daisy Buchanan would not only text while driving, she'd text you to pick her up after she totaled her car. Based on the popular web-feature, Texts from Jane Eyre is a witty, irreverent mashup that brings the characters from your favorite books into the twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627791847
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/04/2014
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	92,094
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Mallory Ortberg is the co-creator of The Toast, a general-interest website geared toward women. She has written for Gawker, New York Magazine, The Hairpin, and The Atlantic. She lives in the Bay Area.

Mallory Ortberg is Slate's "Dear Prudence." She has written for The New Yorker, New York magazine, O, The Oprah Magazine, and The Atlantic. She is the cocreator of The Toast, a general-interest website geared toward women. Mallory is the author of Texts from Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster.

Read an Excerpt

Texts from Jane Eyre

And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Characters

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By Mallory Ortberg

Henry Holt and Company

Copyright © 2014 Mallory Ortberg
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62779-184-7

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CHAPTER 1

Medea

hiiiiiiii

hi who is this

it's Glauce right?? that is such a pretty name I am so crazy about how pretty your name is "Jason and Glauce" sounds so good together

thank you who is this?

when is the WEDDING I hope you guys have the Argonauts as groomsmen and they do the sword thing you know where they make the little roof with their swords and you run down underneath it it's so cute oh my god what am I saying you probably already have a million plans, it's your wedding it was just my favorite part of my wedding (except for the part where I married Jason!!!) (he is so fun to be married to) (tell him I say hi!!!)

sorry who is this

So I know we got off on the wrong foot it's Medea!! save my number okay

oh Hello

but I wanted you to know I do not have any of even the littlest hard feelings all of my feelings about you are just so soft and so normal just normal soft feelings that you're going to love

okay

anyhow so to SHOW YOU how soft my feelings are I got you guys a wedding present!!! I know it's not really "traditional" for the old wife to buy the new wife a gift (especially when she is still technically married to Jason) (who tell him I say hi!!!) buuuut I couldn't help myself

oh! you must mean the box that came on Thursday

yessss I TOTALLY MEAN THAT

it's a dress

it's a wedding dress

thank you I mean, I already have a wedding dress picked out but this is very sweet

do you know what you should do though you should put it on you should put it on your skin and wear it just for a minute (be sure to put it on your skin)

Gilgamesh

come along Gilgamesh be you my husband to me grant your lusciousness I will harness for you a chariot of lapis lazuli with wheels of gold be my husband and I will be your wife

oh wow Ishtar that's so flattering I'm so flattered

the Lullubu people will bring you produce of the mountains as tribute your she-goats will bear triplets

that's such a tempting offer

your ewes twins your donkey will overtake the mule

i would just love to but super quick question how is your boyfriend Tammuz these days is he still trapped in the Underworld?

I don't know what you mean

how about all your other boyfriends still horribly dead or turned into wolves?

you know what never mind

i'm just super curious since you've murdered exactly all of them if maybe you were planning on doing that to me too

i hope you get eaten by dogs

there it is

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg. Copyright © 2014 Mallory Ortberg. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Part I
Medea 3
Gilgamesh 6
Achilles 8
Dido 11
Plato 12
Circe 14
Medea, Part II 17
King Midas 19
The Wife of Bath 20
William Blake 21
King Lear 25
John Donne 30
Hamlet 32
Don Quixote 34
Hamlet, Part II 36
René Descartes 37
William Wordsworth 39
Hamlet, Part III 41
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 43
Hamlet, Part IV 45

Part II
Jane Eyre 49
Sherlock Holmes 52
Emily Dickinson 55
Oliver Twist 60
Lord Byron 62
John Keats 66
Emma 69
Pride and Prejudice 72
Moby-Dick 78
Great Expectations 85
Gone with the Wind 89
Edgar Allan Poe 94
Treasure Island 101
Gone with the Wind, Part II 105

Part III
"The Yellow Wallpaper" 109
Wuthering Heights 114
Little Women 120
Hamlet, Part V 129
Henry David Thoreau 130
Daisy Miller 134
The Island of Dr. Moreau 136
Daisy Miller, Part II 137
Les Misérables 139
A Tale of Two Cities 145
Rudyard Kipling 146
Daisy Miller, Part III 147
Daisy Miller, Part IV 148
The Sun Also Rises 149
Agatha Christie 152
The Great Gatsby 153
Daisy Miller, Part V 155
J. Alfred Prufrock 156
Virginia Woolf 161
William Faulkner 162
Daisy Miller, Part VI 165
Peter Pan 167
The Great Gatsby, Part II 171

Part IV
Sweet Valley High 175
The Outsiders 179
The American Girl Series 183
The Baby-Sitters Club 188
Nancy Drew 192
Atlas Shrugged 196
Fight Club 200
The Lorax 205
Rebecca 209
Cormac McCarthy 213
The Hunger Games 216
William Carlos Williams 219
Harry Potter 222
The Little Prince 225

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/01/2014
This is the best kind of English-major humor. Ortberg, cocreator of the website The Toast, has a wicked sense of humor and an enviable grip on roughly the entire Western literary canon. The book consists of text conversations between notable fictional characters and authors, who are characters in their own right, such as Lord Byron, Henry David Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson. It's loosely arranged by literary era. A final section includes more modern authors (Cormac McCarthy), works (Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca), and literary phenomena (the "American Girl" series, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter books, etc.). Conversations involving Great Expectations and Little Women are particularly entertaining. There's not a weak point in the book; it's terrific, snicker-inducing fun throughout. For the uninitiated, this title may serve as a gateway drug for The Toast. VERDICT Bibliophiles who enjoy their humor laced with snark will be thrilled to find this book, which is probably the only published work containing texts from Medea, Scarlett O'Hara, and Jessica Wakefield. [See Prepub Alert, 6/2/14.]—Audrey Snowden, Orrington P.L., ME

Library Journal

09/15/2014
Humorist Ortberg offers a side-splitting take on famous literary characters from Gilgamesh to Hermione Granger by peeking into their imagined text messages, replete with emoticons, misspellings, and irregular punctuation. Some exchanges update well-known plot points—Goneril intercepts texts from Regan on Edmund’s phone and Gertrude offers to bring a tuna sandwich to Hamlet’s room. Others exaggerate character traits, like Scarlett O’Hara egging on Ashley to guess what corset she’s wearing, or Cathy and Heathcliff one-upping each other about the respective desperation of their love for each another. Ortberg keeps the joke fresh with jabs at various canonical authors, portraying Coleridge interrupted while composing Kubla Khan by “some asshole from Porlock” and Thoreau busily inviting friends and ordering supplies to his “self-sufficient” retreat to the woods. Ortberg gets the most mileage whenever she plays a quirky artist off a nonplussed straight man, whether it’s T.S. Eliot’s friend explaining “I can’t leave work to buy you a peach” or William Carlos Williams’s long-suffering wife reading his note that says, “i have eaten the little red wheelbarrow/ that was in the icebox.” Ortberg charmingly captures, in short, palatable bytes, what is most memorable about famous books and their indelible characters. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

In Texts from Jane Eyre Mallory Ortberg hilariously proves that she understands fictional characters better than they understand themselves. She makes me laugh like no one else.” —Rainbow Rowell, bestselling author of Eleanor & Park and Fangirl

“Dear Mallory Ortberg's Publisher: Please send me 27 cases of Texts from Jane Eyre, because I ate it like it was candy coated in crack cocaine, it's the best, and I need to give it to everyone.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things

“Witty and literate. Smart-ass humor with an emphasis on smart. I'm not sure who I'm more jealous of: Mallory Ortberg for her comic brilliance, or whoever got to sit next to her in high school English.” —Adam Bertocci, author of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski

“Mallory Ortberg is actually, literally the funniest person on the internet. It turns out she has also read everything. This is the smartest, most highbrow, most sophisticated literary book that will ever make you pee yourself in public.” —Rachel Fershleiser, co-editor of Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure

“[A] splendid and wry work of humor writing...Texts from Jane Eyre is to literary culture what The Daily Show is to politics: both use satire to expose the contradictions and absurdity enabling powerful figures.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

“What if the greatest characters in literary history all carried around smartphones and typed out messages to each other?...[A] highbrow yet subversive sensibility” —NPR Morning Edition

“These informal, off the cuff missives are true to each character's voice, as Ortberg understands them deeply—and the result is hilarious...Don't resist. Just give in to this crazy, wonderful book.” —Bustle.com

“Humorist Ortberg offers a side-splitting take on famous literary characters from Gilgamesh to Hermione Granger by peeking into their imagined text messages...Ortberg charmingly captures, in short, palatable bytes, what is most memorable about famous books and their indelible characters.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ortberg finds a way of lampooning the ridiculous characters of the past (both fictional and non fiction) thanks to her endless knowledge of and passion for western literature and history and her sharp humor.” —BUST Magazine

“[Texts from Jane Eyre] is a treasure trove of weird literary jokes which, to be honest, are our favorite kind.” —Brooklyn Magazine

“Each [text conversation] brings a contemporary sensibility to timeless publications of yore. Be prepared to LOL—literally.” —Los Angeles Magazine

“Anyone who is really into the classics and also has a sense of humor will appreciate [Texts from Jane Eyre]. It will make a great holiday present.” —BookRiot's "In the Mailbag"

“[T]his book is a literary aficionado's dream!...This compendium of witty and absolutely charming text messages from and to characters that we all know...had me laughing out loud and rereading over and over again.” —Thereviewbroads.com

“[A] super-funny book that envisions what text conversations would be like with your favorite literary legends...I recommend you pick up Texts from Jane Eyre for any book lover with a sense of humor (and maybe a cell phone.)” —Zulkey.com

“Just in time to complete your Christmas shopping...Read it and send your AP English teacher a thank-you note. ” —Jezebel.com

“This makes me laugh...Cliff's Notes seem so wordy now, don't they?” —Houston Chronicle

From the Publisher

For those who wonder how famous literary characters would text each other, author Mallory Ortberg and narrators Zach Villa and Amy Landon address that curiosity with their fanciful conceit. From Lord Byron to Nancy Drew, Villa and Landon deliver textual banter, bringing out the humorous and the ludicrous in every exchange. What listeners lose in emoticons and acronyms, they gain in verbal irony and other vocal techniques the narrators employ in their performance. While some of the conversations are a little stilted because of their brevity, they’re short enough that the book never lags. For literati who like their fiction tongue in cheek, this one will have you ROTFL. C.A. 2016 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2015 - AudioFile