Ben read and liked Britta's review of Persuasion:

"Although my two favorite Austen novels have long been Pride & Prejudice and Emma, this book struck a very personal chord and has been brought to the forefront of my preferred classic literature.

Harrold Bloom in "The Western Canon"...more Although my two favorite Austen novels have long been Pride & Prejudice and Emma, this book struck a very personal chord and has been brought to the forefront of my preferred classic literature.

Harrold Bloom in "The Western Canon" calls it a "perfect novel." The aforementioned Pride and Emma are riddled with comedic characters and humorous scenes, but Persuasion borders on the grey edges. It is darker and it's heroine, Anne Elliot, more complex. Whereas Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse are transformed through "a-ha" moments of revelation, Anne Elliot's transformation is deeply internal. She is probably the most sagaciously cerebral female character of Austen's creation. Most of the other heroines in Jane's novels have sisters or close friends to whom they confide, but Anne is very much alone and the reader only catches glimpses of her thoughts by "getting inside" her introspective head.

The situation which sets up the novel's conflict reminded me of what a Darcy/Elizabeth situation might have been, in reverse. In all of her other novels, Jane's male heros are rich; figures which the females look to as worthy companions or monetary saviors. Persuasion's situation is the only book in which the woman is the one who comes from a family of wealth (at least initially) and pedigree while the man is penniless and from low birth. It is quite a different a situation which inspires a great deal of sympathy for both.

The novel begins eight years after Anne Elliot has refused her lover, Fredrick Wentworth, a young naval officer who, though honorable, had no money and no family to recommend him. Anne Elliot is the daughter of a Baronet. At the persuasion of her godmother, Lady Russell, Anne refuses his proposal of marriage when she is 19.

Persuasion illustrates the disparity in male/female choices during the Regency; though men were looked down upon or even cut off from their inheritance (as Edward Ferrars in Sense & Sensibility) by making an imprudent match, the complications of a woman marrying a man "beneath her" were much more severe in Austen's time. Women at this time period were praised for their "prudence" and chastised for being "impetuous." Lady Russell's many reasons to turn Wentworth down included Sir Elliot's disapproval of a "degrading match," which would then ruin the chances of her two sisters making a good match thereafter. She also tells Anne a marriage would hold Wentworth back from making a name for himself in the navy. Lady Russell her a match between them could very likely be just as damaging to him as it could be to her. How could he ever advance with a wife to support? In the middle of a war (the Napoleonic wars), what would become of her if he were killed?

Believing a separation the best for all concerned, Anne rejects Frederick Wentworth and enters into a state of perpetual mourning She later receives another offer of marriage from a "respectable" young man, but she refuses him out of feeling rather than decorum and continues in a depressed existence in her father's house for years.

When her her father, Sir Walter Elliot (a vain socialite), spends the family to near bankruptcy, the Elliots are forced to let out (rent) their family estate, Kellynch. In a bizarre act of fate, the couple who comes to rent the mansion are Admiral and Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Croft is the sister of Frederick Wentworth. Frederick has now become a Captain in the British Navy and distinguished himself as a war hero. Despite his newly acquired status, Anne's father still regards the navy as a place where persons of low birth might attempt to mingle with their "superiors" - the aristocracy, and has no regard for the Crofts despite their monetary station.

Through twists and turns of circumstances, Anne and Fredrick always find themselves brought together in uncomfortable situations that bring rise to old feelings that were never lost but subverted. Austen is an author of characters. The richness of her novels is in the fullness of the personalities presented. Both of these characters are well-developed and inspire empathy in the reader. Captain Wentworth is much more drawn than Mr Darcy and Anne Elliot is deeper.

There is a great deal of social critique in all of Austen's novels, but this book in particular illustrates the British caste system as well as the tenuous situation women lived in. When people write Jane off as "simple," they are merely not reading her novels close enough. There is more going on in her books than is visible on the surface. It's important to keep in mind that many writers were being thrown to the stocks at this time for slander or anything considered vulgar or unpatriotic. When you start reading between the lines of what Austen is showing us rather than telling us, you come to realize her writing is indeed, complex.

Persuasion, Austen's final novel, was impressive and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.


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Ben read and liked Adrian Stumpp's review of My Life as a Fake:

"Ern Mallory, apparently, was a famous Australian literary hoaxer circa 1940. The hoax consisted of a handful of faux-T.S. Eliot highbrow modernist poems written by a pair of anti-modernist poets as a sort of a joke. The poems were intended to be cl...more Ern Mallory, apparently, was a famous Australian literary hoaxer circa 1940. The hoax consisted of a handful of faux-T.S. Eliot highbrow modernist poems written by a pair of anti-modernist poets as a sort of a joke. The poems were intended to be cliche parodies illustrating all the worst, most self-indulgent, hyperbolic aspects of modernist poetry. The fictitious poet, Mallory, was conscientiously packaged as a Marxist class hero--a well-read, erudite, self-educated working man (bicycle repairman, in fact). The poems were published and heralded as works of great modernist genius. The hoaxers had a good laugh. But when the truth came out, as it is sometimes wont to do when the fictitious poet becomes an overnight sensation, it caused quite the scandal in literary circles. This much is historical fact.

Carey's (fictionalized) version of the literary hoax takes a decidedly Frankensteinian twist that makes for some good reading, if, in the end, the conclusion doesn't quite live up to the novel's early promise. Traditional fans of Carey should beware. This is basically a literary thriller in the vein of The DaVinci Code or The Book of Air and Shadow. It poses as high literature, but really its just a well spun mystery yarn marketed towards book geeks. Christopher Chubb is a convincingly creepy and ambivolent character but otherwise all the personages who populate My Life as a Fake are functional because, as I said before, this is at heart a straight forward mystery novel and in straight forward mystery novel, however literary their trappings, the primary purpose of all characters is to serve a practical function. A damn good read, but not the usual fare from Peter Carey.(less) "

Ben read and liked Adrian Stumpp's review of Ragtime:

"First of all, it bears saying that Doctorow is an exceptional writer. His prose is lean yet evocative and exceptionally effective. Ragtime is a page-turner. The plot is unwieldy and in the hands of a lesser storyteller would fail abysmally. It su...more First of all, it bears saying that Doctorow is an exceptional writer. His prose is lean yet evocative and exceptionally effective. Ragtime is a page-turner. The plot is unwieldy and in the hands of a lesser storyteller would fail abysmally. It succeeds, more or less for all the same reasons a well-wrought hardboiled mystery succeeds: the action propels the reader forward. That said, Ragtime has far FAR more flaws than strengths. While reading I was constantly reminded of Thomas Carlyle's History of the French Revolution. Carlyle's charm was that he wrote a first rate nineteenth century novel and expected us to accept it as history. Doctorow's failure is that he wrote a second rate revisionist history of the early decades of the twentieth century and expects us to accept it as fiction.

The greater number of Ragtime's characters are real historical personages, ranging from the sex-kitten Evelyn Nesbitt to Harry Houdini to the anarchist activist Emma Goldman, and while I have to tip my hat to Doctorow's ambition, I can't say he pulls any of it off. We cannot speak about "Doctorow's Houdini" or "Doctorow's J.P. Morgan" as we can "Shakespeare's Caesar" as opposed to "Plutarch's Caesar" as opposed to the historical Caesar. Shakespeare and Plutarch painted character interpretations of historical personages. Doctorow tells us nothing about Morgan, Henry Ford, Houdini, or Nesbitt we couldn't learn better from a history or even a period newspaper. These historical characters are utterly superficial in Doctorow's hands. The only exception is Emma Goldman, who, apparently, was a blustering, narrow-minded, pedantic bitch, if we're to take Doctorow's "interpretation" at face value. In fact, the only remotely interesting thing Doctorow says about any of his historical personages comes quite early in the novel in a five page long chapter concerning Sigmund Freud, who then disappears never to be seen again. Doctorow points out that the generation in question was, because of Freud, the last generation of Americans not to be ashamed of loving their own mother. Freud, Doctorow tells us, ruined sex in America. Whether this is true or not, it is certainly interesting, and it is Ragtimes one shining moment of the novels ability to recast history.

Ultimately, the problem with Ragtime is that it clocks in at a mere 266 pages. Doctorow's ambition was to write a grand, sweeping, all encompassing epic of the early twentieth century a la Les Miserables or War and Peace, but he also wanted to cater to the diluted sensibilities, prejudices, and impotent attention spans of late twentieth century American readers. The two conditions are antithetical and so the novel cannot achieve anything greater than becoming a platform for Doctorow's wonderful capacities as a yarn spinner. A very good, if conceptually obnoxious, read. (less) "