The Man Who Loved Jane Austen

by Ray Smith

After fictional excursions abroad to Germany, France, Scotland, Italy, Africa, and Australia, and back to the 1920s, the nineteenth century, and the Middle Ages, Ray Smith has come home to English Montreal in the 1990s. The Man Who Loved Jane Austen is a penetrating story of a Montreal with only the lingering effervescence of its past, a Montreal of loss, or regret, of sadness. A Montreal where nationalism corrodes every event, every relationship, every soul. A Montreal of lies and betrayal. Smith's work combines astonishing inventiveness with a warm and gregarious humanity. His first book, Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada (1969, reissued by The Porcupine's Quill in 1989), burst upon a largely uncomprehending world in an explosion of post-modernist experimentation and whimsy. The novel, Lord Nelson Tavern (1974) is an odyssey of love and friendship; it conceals its equally innovative structures behind a surface reality of poignant characters and memorable incidents. Smith again extended his range with Century (1986), a novel which explores the horrors and beauties of the modern world. His most recent book, A Night at the Opera (The Porcupine's Quill, 1992), is an exploration of the preposterous German city of Waltherrott, a delightful cavalcade of fools and knaves, grouches and maniacs, frumps and tarts, heroes and clowns.

234 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 1999

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Ray Smith (the novelist) was born in Cape Breton in 1941.

For more than three decades, Ray Smith has occupied a distinctive position on the margins of the Canadian literary scene. His work is characterized by an interest in experimentation, but there is no discernible pattern of development. Each of his books is markedly different from the others, and none fits comfortably into the standard academic overviews of Canadian literature.

His first book, Cape Breton Is the Thought Control Centre of Canada (short fiction), is one of the earliest Canadian examples of experimental writing in the international tradition. (Of American writers, perhaps Donald Barthelme provides the closest analogue.) The relentless, witty interrogation of short story form underscores a parallel skepticism about received truths in other areas of life.

Smith's first novel, Lord Nelson Tavern, focuses on a group of about ten characters, most of whom have known each other from their student days. The first of its seven sections depicts that period of their lives as being relatively ordinary, but as their life stories unfold, their individual narratives become increasingly bizarre and exotic. One, for example, becomes a famous poet who marries an Oscar-winning actress. Another—the least likely—becomes a major player in a world-class drug smuggling operation; eventually he is murdered in accordance with Hollywood convention. A third becomes an internationally acclaimed artist, a fourth a producer of pornographic films, and so on.

Smith does not attempt to make such lives seem believable. Instead his interest is in exploring the voices of his characters, both spoken and written. Much of the book is in dialogue, and there are many unusually long speeches; two of the sections are transcriptions of diaries. Though many of the episodes involve comic exaggeration, the novel does address serious thematic issues, especially the nature of love and art, and the factors that promote and destroy them. Taken as a whole (and despite the sometimes frivolous and cynical rhetoric), Lord Nelson Tavern professes an almost Romantic faith in the validity of romantic love and the power of art to redeem human experience.

Read more: Ray Smith Biography http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4747...

Reviews

[Mark Lisac · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of Canada's most underappreciated writers turned in his trademark avoidance of expectations here. The story begins as a sort of shambling comic study of academic life in a community college and Anglo life in an increasingly hostile or non-comprehensible Quebec, then drifts inexorably toward melancholy. There's a bit of 19th-century feel to the social relationships. The central character, Cape Breton-born English instructor Frank Wilson finds himself in the talon-like clutches of nefarious upper-class city dwellers in Montreal. He's an innocent; most readers will understand a crucial plot against him much earlier than he does.
Essentially though, it's a story of fatherhood, childhood and the way that character may get intertwined with place. It also conveys conversations — and the way that spoken words interact with unspoken thoughts — in a fresh and compelling style.

[Tina Kensinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written but I had no cultural context for it.

[Geoffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I can't say that I enjoyed The Man Who Loved Jane Austen. I found almost all the characters unappealing, to say the least...

[Yuyu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es la segunda vez que leo este libro.

La verdad es que este libro, me abrió la esperanza de que Austen si tuvo un gran amor, pero por las circunstancias de la época no se pudo concretar. Y la nostalgia que me produce al final del libro es fantástica. Alguien pudo tener el corazón de Austen, y de ahí nace el personaje de Mr. Darcy.

100% recomendable.