Hey, did you guys know that all those times in Sex and the City where the girls would go shopping or buy shoes or cry over men, it was actually a subversive parody of modern day consumer culture?

At least, that's how SATC author (and future scribe of children's books!) Candace Bushnell wants you to see it. Bushnell claims her new book, One Fifth Avenue, is "a snapshot of New York just before this financial crisis," which is just a clever book jacket spin for "Nobody wants to read about Carrie Bradshaw's shoe collection when they've lost their life savings."

But Bushnell isn't satisfied to reinvent books she's only just written, she wants to change the meaning of the canon she's already famous for:

" I'm not condoning it; I just think it's interesting. I'm just recording it. Some of the satire in the book is about the materialism and the dangers of that, and the emptiness as well."

Well, at leas we all can agree that Bushnell's characters are materialistic and empty. But Bushnell seems to fancy herself Jane Austen incarnate: "Have you ever seen Pride and Prejudice, when Elizabeth Bennet marries? Everyone loves that. Same with Carrie and Mr. Big."

Um, no? Because there is a difference between the 18th century cultural criticism that begins facetiously: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife," and the 20th century one that truly believes it.