Deborah Yaffe's Blog, page 8

Jane Austen on the radio

Tune in from 11 am to noon this Wednesday, September 18, when I’ll be talking Jane Austen on “Radio Times,” a morning show broadcast on WHYY, the Philadelphia NPR station. It’s a show I’ve listened to for years, so I’m looking forward it. (You can also listen online here.)

Group read at Pemberley

I'm very excited about the week-long Group Read of Among the Janeites, which starts this Sunday, September 15, at the Republic of Pemberley, the web's largest Jane Austen fan community. I stumbled upon the Janeites of Pemberley about eight years ago, and it was that encounter that eventually inspired me to write the book. I'll be answering questions (dodging brickbats?) during the Group Read.

A Group Read is nothing more complicated than an online book discussion, paced according to a preset schedule (the schedule for Among the Janeites can be found here). Anyone can participate; you don't have to sign up in advance, although once you comment, Pemberley will ask you to register the name you're using (and it has to be some version of your real name -- this is one of the site's few hard-and-fast rules, and it's a good one, tending to promote a civility and kindness that are all too rare in cyberspace).

Please drop by and chime in!

Appearance tonight: Princeton Public Library

I’ll be speaking about and signing Among the Janeites tonight in the Community Room of the beautiful Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon Street, Princeton, NJ. The event starts at 7 pm and will definitely be over by 9 pm, since that’s when the library closes.

If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by: all are welcome, no RSVP required.

Letters about Jane

Keith Sharon, an old friend and colleague from our days at the Jersey City newspaper, mentions Among the Janeites in an Orange County Register column about the lost art of letter-writing.

Alas, you can't read it all without signing up with the site and forking over $2. That's a hassle, but if more newspapers had charged for content from the dawn of the Internet, maybe more newspapers would still be around. . .

"Austenland": Just plain bad

Shannon Hale’s Austenland is not a great work of literature: it’s a mildly entertaining beach read with a cute romantic denouement. The movie version could have been a sweet, funny summertime romantic comedy, something for us girls to see while the menfolk were occupied with “Boys Blowing Things Up, Part VIII.”

Much though my little feminist heart longs to support "Austenland" as a rare, female-centric movie – producer Stephenie (Twilight) Meyer noted in a interview that it's “based on a novel by a woman, scripted by women, produced by women, directed by a woman and starring a woman” -- honesty compels me to report that it's appalling.

It’s not bad like a guilty pleasure, or bad like an interesting experiment gone wrong, or even so-bad-it’s-good. It’s just bad – unfunny, unsexy, and uninterested in any of the real questions that its story might raise about women, romantic fantasy, and Jane Austen’s relationship to both.

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Aww. . .

If Jane Austen were a kitten, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't write like this. But even so, this Adopt-a-Pet ad for an adorable tortoiseshell Manx in Nashville, TN -- clearly placed by a Janeite pet-rescuer -- is pretty irresistible.

Waiting for Austenland

"Austenland," the new movie based on Shannon Hale's novel about a Colin Firth-obsessed woman vacationing at a Regency theme park, won't open in a multiplex near me for another ten days -- or so the movie's perky little web site informs me.

Despite the generally atrocious reviews -- "embarrassingly juvenile," says the New York Times -- I've been looking forward to this movie ever since I heard it was being made. The book was fun, and wih JJ Feild playing the hero, how could you go wrong? (I may eat those words soon, but for now I remain optimistic.)

Meanwhile, here's an interview in which Hale talks about her Austen-love and why Henry Tilney (once played -- definitively, in my opinion -- by JJ Feild) doesn't get as much swoony admiration as Mr. Darcy. Her basic argument: we readers identify with Elizabeth Bennet and therefore like the guy who's smart enough to fall in love with her.

There's a bit of the plain-Lizzy meme at work in Hale's thesis, but it's an interesting idea nonetheless, this suggestion that we're really falling in love with idealized versions of ourselves when we swoon for Austen heroes. Might be right. . .

Catfight on the moors?

Why do so many people who write about Jane Austen feel compelled to referee an imaginary smackdown between her and the Bronte sisters? The latest example is Alan Titchmarsh, writing recently in the UK Telegraph. In a mostly unremarkable tribute to Austen (heartfelt love stories, appealing characters, snarky narrative voice, etc., etc.), he begins by explaining why, despite his Yorkshire roots, he prefers Darcy to Heathcliff.

I just don’t get it. When Austen died, Charlotte Bronte was a toddler; Emily and Anne weren’t even born yet. Austen was a Georgian; the Brontes were Victorians. Austen wrote ironic, restrained courtship novels; the Brontes wrote extravagantly emotional romances. I love the Brontes, but they’re not trying to beat Austen at her own game; they’re playing another sport entirely.

True, all four novelists wrote stories in which heterosexual romance plays an important role, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end. And heterosexual romance plays an important role in works by any number of male novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Yet male writers aren’t lined up for head-to-head competition this way. Articles about Dickens don’t lead off by adjudicating his merits vis-a-vis Thackeray or Hardy, as if there were no point in writing about someone who wasn’t certifiably Numero Uno. No, it’s just with women novelists that we're required to pick a single winner. Apparently, there’s only room for one girl in the clubhouse.

Sharpening my sword

The Dallas Morning News' film critic, Chris Vognar, talked with me for a column he's just published on Austen fervor and the new movie of Austenland (which I still haven't seen: curses on this suburban cinematic wasteland!) Along the way, he calls Among the Janeites "sword-sharp" and "a lively chronicle of Austen fandom."

Movie critic who gets to write about Jane Austen from time to time: now that's my dream job. . .

Kids these days

Now why didn't they do this kind of thing when I was in college?

Students at Monmouth College, a small, private liberal-arts school in Monmouth, IL, are planning a Jane Austen ball to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. (This is part of the delightfully named "Summer Opportunities for Intellectual Activities" program. AKA summer school, perhaps?)

I'm most curious to hear what the "Regency-era finger food" and "Austen-themed meals" will consist of. . .