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What’s there to say about Mallory Ortberg’s Texts from Jane Eyre except what fun! When I first began seeing the book around the interwebs I thought, pfft, how stupid, this is as bad as turning Pride and Prejudice into a story about zombies. But I was wrong. This my friends is a delightful book of humor. Who cares that Circe and Odysseus didn’t have phones? If they did I’m sure they would have texted each other something like this:

where did the pigs come from Circe

i don’t know
a pig farm
a pig mommy and a pig daddy who loved each other very much and gave each other a special handshake

CIRCE

oh my god okay fine
they’re your crew, you got me
I turned all of your friends into pigs

why did you turn my friends into pigs

I don’t know
maybe the real question is
why are your friends
so turn-into-pigsable

Ortberg is great at capturing the absurdity, oddness, or quirk of story or character, or even real life authors. Like the spoof of John Donne and his poem The Flea:

it means we’re basically married
it has my blood and your blood in it
so
you’ve technically already had sex with me
and you might as well do it again

I don’t
wait
but there could be a lot of other blood in there too

well we might have to have sex with all those people too

Or Henry David Thoreau texting Ralph Waldo Emerson:

o you know whos my family ralph

who

these squirrels
these squirrels and this chipmunk and that crow there

the crow on the chimney?

NO
not that one
god i hate that one
hes not my family
hes a fucking asshole

There are also paranoid texts from J. Alfred Prufrock and texts from the Lorax cracked me up. There were a few I had a hard time relating too since I never read any of the Sweet Valley High books, the Baby-sitters Club or the American Girls. I did laugh at the texts between Nancy Drew and her boyfriend Ned though.

Texts from Jane Eyre is a quick, light book sure to make you laugh more than a few times. I can promise that if you are reading it with someone else in the room you will want to read some of the texts aloud to that person in order to share the fun. And if you enjoy Ortberg’s humor, you can catch it nearly daily at The Toast.

  Click on the image below to read Mallory Ortberg’s adroit piece.

Imagine if Scarlett O'Hara, Jane Eyre, and other great characters tweeted and texted. The new book Texts from Jane Eyre by Mallory Ortberg is a novel built around that conceit.

Here's a funny example from the book posted on the National Public Radio (NPR) website:

Gone with the Wind

Scarlett O'Hara:
ashley
ashley
ashley
ashley r u there
ashleyyyyyyyy
(i'm DRUNK (from brandy))
remember that time
we made out in the barn

Ashley Wilkes:
Scarlett, it's four in the morning and I have to
get up in two hours to run your mill
Please don't text me this late

Scarlett O'Hara:
oh i sold the mill
haha
did i not tell you that

Ashley Wilkes:
Oh my God.

Scarlett O'Hara:
did you know that pantalets are out this year
that's why im not wearing any :)

Ashley Wilkes:
OH MY GOD

Texts from Jane Eyre also plays with many other characters from the Western canon, including Sherlock and Watson, Captain Ahab and Ishmael, and Nancy Drew and Ned.

Check out Ortberg's website The Toast, which she co-founded with Nicole Cliffe, for more literary satire.
And take a look at NPR's story on Ortberg.

Now choose a character and let me know what he or she would tweet or text?

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