Date: Sat, 28 Feb 1998 17:41:26 -0800
From: Jascha Kessler <jkessler@ucla.edu>
The times, they are a changin'. One must assume Marchand knows it really
goes, s'e non a vero, e ben trovato. (No accents included). That old
saying he reverses, but it comes out wittily. As for screening MSS., my
wife, Julia Barrett, the author of two sequels to Jane Austen (PRESUMPTION,
a sequel to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, the next, THE THIRD SISTER: a Continuation
of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY), both out within the current lustrum, and very
successful in a difficult market, because they are very high end pastiche,
not revisionist feminist PC Little Shoppe at Chawton murder mysteries,
etc., almost had a movie sale, but the agent was a flake, as it turned out,
though we knew she was (but that is another story, and went on a month's
vacation, instead of signing the option letter. To my surprise, I happened
to mention the difficulties of the market to a playwriting seminar of
undergrads, last year about this time, when, Lo! and Behole! as Pogo used
to squeak, a Chinese boy with very poor English, poorly spoken and scarcely
written, but a charming and ambitious fellow, said, I know that book! I
read it for such and such a studio, and I recommended it upstairs. This
kid was 21 at most, and working as in intern, in the high paying Hollywood
world that doesnt pay interns, you see...talk about TAs? and that is what
is the fate of well published pros, as Barrett is with Penguin, etc., comes
down to.... The academic world is ridden with nonliterates, as you can
imagine, and friends helping friends, not attempts to make things
better...etc. This, just for your laughs out there.
Jascha Kessler
Professor of English & Modern Literature
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
Department of English
Box 951530
Los Angeles, California 90095-1530
Telephone/Facsimile: (310) 393-4648
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