Jane Austen

a century later, I've been warned off DH lawrence. he any good?

Jane Austen is considered to be "important" and "canonical," and I concede that she is a good writer (in the technical sense) with an observant eye for detail. But she's not a favorite because she's too mannered for my tastes, and she used her obvious talents to write about things that bore and/or irritate me shitless (essentially, gossip). Sorta like you might think that The National Enquirer (or whatever the British equivalent of that gossip rag is) is well-written and sassy, but wonder why anyone would waste their time and/or talent writing about such tedious and boring piffle (or why people read such things).

Austen strikes me as being the Great Yenta of English Lit. Not to my taste, so maybe I'm the wrong one to ask. I think some others on ILE like her well enough, though.

(2) I nevertheless find Austen interesting if read in a certain way.

(3) The core of that way of reading is to constantly remind yourself of Austen's position as a woman writing during that particular time period, and to search -- amid all of her concessions/dedications to the rigid novelistic conventions of the day -- for the snot and the snideness and the sarcasm that's buried underneath them. This also prepares you for the discovery that even her snot and sarcasm is actually quite earnest and doe-eyed and idealistic, insofar as you discover that it's not directed against the prevailing literary and social conventions but very much involved in them.

(4) I.e., Austen was not the dissenter that her more highbrow supporters make her out to be.

(5) Neither are novels readable and compelling as stories, as her less highbrow supporters make them out to be.

(6) I don't really enjoy Austen.

I very much care for Austen.

I very much don't care for the idea that the close textual and textural detailing of the scope of narrow lives, that closeness making a density and richness, can be dismissed as trivia or gossip, or interesting only in relation to the sensibilities of 20 y-o girls. But that's just me, and I'm a bit drunk and should leave to go out for dinner now.

The stories are fine (though maybe _Emma_ takes a bit too much cake) for moral fairy tales spun out of the subtleties of a tight caste society.

Gareth, start with _Persuasion_. It's one of the shorter ones, and somewhat sombre (in a lovely way) for Austen. IT can't hurt to try, can it?

Dudes! I can't believe the rank nonsense in this thread. Make me understand the hate.

Twain is one of those tedious "wit"s, and I can never bear to read anything by him other than Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn.

I can't think of a better book than Emma.

Austen's understanding of the prose sentence is really phenomenal. Really beautiful sentences. I love 'em.

OTM -- it's the same old "dead white male" barb except she happens to be a woman.

I read Persuasion first, in about 8th Grade (what is that, 11? 12?) and it nearly put me off her until life. Until I read more of her, later (I think I may have re-dived into Emma first) and became obsessed.)

A few years later I was in a library, working hard for important exams, and while taking a breather picked up Mansfield Park and started reading it. The idea would have been to escape from studying for a few minutes and stick it back on the shelf. I certainly didn't have time to waste on books unconnected with the exams.

I finished it about 4 in the morning. As soon as the exams were finished I read everything she ever wrote (including, of course, re-reading the still occasionally annoying but nevertheless brilliant Emma). I've been rereading them ever since. I still think reading her is just about the most purely pleasurable reading I've done.

when i was 16 i read a couple more - sense and sensibility i think, and perhaps this was when i read emma properly - and was kind of more interested but still pretty dismissive, like wtf she wastes her time arguing about these prissy things in high society why should i care ("whereas *I*! *I* am reading *MILAN KUNDERA*! who writes about VAST ISSUES and stuff!" grrr typical bloody 16yr old, i could slap me).

then over the next ten years i slowly got more into her, picked up a novel here and there, and now what i really like is the um prismatic nature of her writing. ok you can say this about a lot of great writers (and a lot of it is to do with the reader) but this is deadly accurate in a way that few others manage - it looks like it all takes place on the surface but when you think through that you find she's directed you so precisely to the point she's making - i dunno, i find myself grinning out loud. she is not arsing around with pretty-pretty social mores and whatever, this is meaty, incisive, daring stuff you guys.

i haven't read northanger abbey yet, though it has been sitting on my shelf for a good two years.

just read persuasion myself. anne elliott is a great character. such an interestingly structured book... so weirdly tentative in so many ways. almost feels a bit like chekov with a happy ending sometimes.

took me a couple hours to get into the rhythm of her sentences but once i did i was flying.

It's the only Austen I've read (indeed, we studied it in class), and I regard it very highly. Some truly inspired, delicious characterisation.

i've only read that and sexy sensibility.

Let me unearth a particularly fine essay I wrote on the novel.

i'm outta here.

I've only read Pride and Prejudice. What I find strange is that there are no descriptive passages at all really, and you basically need to know what the big houses and empire line dress they would have worn during the Regency era look like already.

Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 13 September 1898

mark twain was so close to inventing Quirk Books

also "It seems a great pity that they let her die a natural death"

o_O

I can't think of a better book than Emma.

Today, after staying up half the night reading it, Persuasion is the greatest novel in the language - and all the 'she didn't write about real stuff' bollocks: the whole story is a war story - Wentworth comes back rich and marriageable as a war hero, the Croft's take the place -geographical and social - of the deeply stupid Sir Walter as representatives of the class(es) that are about to replace the squirearchy thanks to said war, and to the revolution in the means of production.

Even Anne's ability, at 27, to marry the man she couldn't marry at 19, is not entirely due to her greater courage and understanding, but also due to the social tide having turned...... and yet women remain prisoners, swapping one cage for another, unless, like Mrs. Croft, and Anne, we trust, they have the intelligence and nerve to be a companion to their husbands: to converse, rather than to exist as ornaments or - in the case of Mary - as scolds.

Not to mention the transformative effect of writing as it is represented by various letters in the book and by Anne's wish that she could show them all as they each appear, plainly...

Austen and Twain could not be more unlike as writers or as humorists. Their very senses of what constitutes decorum and how to subvert it come from different universes. I like 'em both.

Austen's like a master embroiderer turning out flawlessly elaborate tapestries, which, when you invert them, show you every character with a mischievously drawn moustache and strategically placed warts. Twain is much gaudier and more flamboyant, but his emotions run deep and pure, and this saves him from being another Petroleum V. Nasby.

I am reading Northanger Abbey. I am liking how it treats really mundane things in an almost operatic manner.

I read Emma a while ago and found it a bit difficult to get into - it seemed really long-winded at the start. But there was some great character stuff in it as it got going.

I do get the impression that Austen does rather recycle her characters, though.

Mark C up thread very OTM on Northanger Abbey.

what the hell was I talking about on this thread? someone go back in time and spend like 1999-2004 beating the crap out of me, please

do you like austen now? yay!

i love jane austen btw but not Northanger Abbey

yeah it's not my favorite either

also i think one day when i'm a better, smarter person i'll like persuasion the best, but emma is still kind of my fave

I was amused by the accelerated way Northanger Abbey ended, almost like she just lost interest in it and didn't want to write it anymore. Thus Jane Austen is revealed as an influence on Flaming Carrot creator Bob Burden.

N1tsuh was never less otm than the beginning of this thread.

Recommendation: DA Miller's Jane Austen, or The Secret of Style.

And NA is great, too.

i love mansfield park. sonofstan otm five months ago about persuasion. never read northanger abbey (or emma, which is near the top of the current queue).

I don't come across too many people who love Mansfield Park! I love all of Austen except this novel, Fanny is too weepy and passive for me to really care much what happens to her.

da miller's book is the only good book an austen afaict. people write such ridic dumb stuff about her

the only good book *on* austen

fanny is indeed super weepy and passive and also a total prig and one of the reasons i'm so impressed by mansfield park is that it's brave enough to do that, confident that it'll be able to draw her character deeply enough to get your empathy anyway. the way her weepiness and passivity and priggishness is implicitly attributed to this huge inferiority complex she has re: being poor (also there's kind of the sense that she feels on probation all the time), which she's really ashamed of but also secretly feels makes her better than her cousins, is really really intimate and attentive and cool. the segment where she goes back to her poor family whom she has all these feelings of salt-of-the-earth pride about and has kept in her mind the whole time she's been living with her mean dissolute rich cousins, and she can't stand that they're poor, is extremely cool.

the best part about that famous Lionel Trilling bit in Metropolitan is how Tom Townsend (willfully?) gets Trilling's take on Mansfield Park totally wrong.

Not said often enough: Mrs. Norris is one of the best villains ever.

ha, was just going to post how any mention of mansfield park always reminds me of metropolitan, not austen

metropolitan reminds me of austen

history of england is so great

Henry the 6th

I cannot say much for this Monarch's Sense. Nor would I if I could, for he was a Lancastrian. I suppose you know all about the Wars between him & the Duke of York who was of the right side; if you do not, you had better read some other History, for I shall not be very diffuse in this, meaning by it only to vent my Spleen AGAINST, & shew my Hatred TO all those people whose parties or principles do not suit with mine, & not to give information. This King married Margaret of Anjou, a woman whose distresses & Misfortunes were so great as almost to make me who hate her, pity her. It was in this reign that Joan of Arc lived & made such a row among the English. They should not have burnt her — but they did. There were several Battles between the Yorkists & Lancastrians, in which the former (as they ought) usually conquered. At length they were entirely overcome; The King was murdered — & Edward the 4th ascended the Throne.

Lamp if you haven't read the juvenilia you should

dear hs, i am thinking you and austen might have the same (admirable) brand of strictness.

haha i think i have modeled my life on her brand of strictness, but she's so much funnier ;_;

that is the single nicest thing anyone has ever said to me btw *blushing*

<3

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html

Mr. Chwe set to doing his English homework, and now his assignment is in. “Jane Austen, Game Theorist,” just published by Princeton University Press, is more than the larky scholarly equivalent of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” In 230 diagram-heavy pages, Mr. Chwe argues that Austen isn’t merely fodder for game-theoretical analysis, but an unacknowledged founder of the discipline itself: a kind of Empire-waisted version of the mathematician and cold war thinker John von Neumann, ruthlessly breaking down the stratagems of 18th-century social warfare.

Or, as Mr. Chwe puts it in the book, “Anyone interested in human behavior should read Austen because her research program has results.”

The course description of the grad seminar on Austen that I'm taking this Fall:

This seminar will examine Austen’s major fiction within the context of contemporary notions of femininity and the legal, economic, and cultural place assigned women of Austen’s generation. Particular attention will be paid to Austen’s representation of reading practices in Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Issues to be explored will include female education and the strictures regulating women’s reading in late 18th/early 19th century conduct literature, the circulation of public and private texts within the novels, sites of reading, and the relation between individual reading habits and social literacy.

I'm pretty much an Austen newbie, so this is like diving head first into the deep end for me.