The Jane Austen Book Club (29 page)

38.
Lionel Trilling, “
Mansfield Park
,” in Ian Watt, ed.,
Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 126.

39.
Kingsley Amis, “What Became of Jane Austen?” in Watt,
Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays
, p. 142.

40.
Angus Wilson, “The Neighbourhood of Tombuctoo: Conflicts in Jane Austen's Novels,” in Southam,
Critical Essays on Jane Austen
, p. 186.

41.
Margaret Drabble, “Introduction,”
Lady Susan; The Watsons; Sanditon
(Great Britain: Penguin, 1974), p. 7.

42.
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979),
The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination
(New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 154–155.

43.
Vladimir Nabokov,
Lectures on Literature
, ed. Fred Bowers (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980), p. 10.

44.
Fay Weldon (1984),
Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen
(New York: Taplinger, 1985), p. 97.

45.
Katha Pollitt, “Rereading Jane Austen's Novels,”
The New Republic
, August 7 and 14, 1989, p. 35.

46.
Kent, “Learning History with, and from, Jane Austen,” p. 59.

47.
Y. Matsukawa, “Melus Interview: Gish Jen,”
Melus
, 18, no. 4 (Winter 1993), p. 111.

48.
Edward W. Said,
Culture and Imperialism
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 84.

49.
Belinda Luscombe, “Which Persuasion?”
Time
, August 14, 1995, p. 73.

50.
Carol Shields and Anne Giardini, “Martians in Jane Austen?”
Persuasions
, 18 (December 16, 1996), pp. 196, 199.

51.
Martin Amis, “Jane's World,”
The New Yorker
, January 8, 1996, p. 34.

52.
Anthony Lane, “The Dumbing of Emma,”
The New Yorker
, August 5, 1996, p. 76.

53.
James W. Michaels, “Jane Austen Novels as Management Manuals,”
Forbes
, 159, no. 5 (March 10, 1997), p. 14.

54.
Susan M. Korba, “ ‘Improper and Dangerous Distinctions': Female Relationships and Erotic Domination in
Emma
,”
University of North Texas Studies in the Novel
, 29, no. 2 (Summer 1997), p. 139.

55.
David Andrew Graves, “Computer Analysis of Word Usage in
Emma
,”
Persuasions
, 21 (1999), pp. 203, 211.

56.
Quoted in Natalie Tyler, ed.,
The Friendly Jane Austen
(New York: Penguin, 1999), p. 231.

57.
Anthony Lane, “All over the Map” (review of the film
Mansfield Park
),
The New Yorker
, November 29, 1999, p. 140.

58.
Nalini Natarajan, “Reluctant Janeites: Daughterly Value in Jane Austen and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee's
Swami
,” in You-me Park and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, eds.,
The Postcolonial Jane Austen
(London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 141.

59.
Shannon R. Wooden, “ ‘You Even Forget Yourself': The Cinematic Construction of Anorexic Women in the 1990's Austen Films,”
Journal of Popular Culture
, Fall 2002, p. 221.

60.
Elsa Solender, “Recreating Jane Austen's World on Film.”
Persuasions
, 24 (2002), pp. 103–104.

61.
Quoted at
www.bloomsburymagazine.com
.

Jocelyn's Questions

 

1. Austen's books often leave you wondering whether all of her matches are good ideas. Troubling couples may include: Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon, Lydia Bennet and Wickham, Emma and Mr. Knightley, Louisa Musgrove and Captain Benwick. Do any of the matches in
The Jane Austen Book Club
create disquiet?

2. Do you like any of the movies based on Austen's books? Do you ever like movies based on books? Have you seen any of the adaptations of Austen's novels that star a Jack Russell terrier named Wishbone? Do you want to?

3. Is it rude to give a person a book as a gift and then ask later if the person liked it? Would you ever do that?

Allegra's Questions

 

1. We seldom go to elegant balls anymore, but high school proms still play a prominent—too prominent—role in our personal histories. Especially if we didn't attend them. Why does every teen romance movie end up at the prom?

2. Does any part of your answer have to do with dancing?

3. In
The Jane Austen Book Club
, I take two falls and visit two hospitals. Did you stop to wonder how a woman who supports herself making jewelry affords health insurance? Do you think we will ever have universal coverage in this country?

Prudie's Questions

 

1. What I meant in that section about irony is that just because everyone finds their social level at the end of
Emma
doesn't mean Austen approves of it. Like with Shakespeare, it's hard to read Austen and know what her opinions really were about much of anything. Can the same be said of Karen Joy Fowler?

2.
Il est plus honteux de se défier de ses amis, que d'en être trompé.
Agree or disagree?

3. Which of the women in
Sex in the City
is Dean
really
most like?

Grigg's Questions

 

1. Jane Austen's books were initially published without the author's name and tagged “An Interesting Book,” which alerted the reader that romance was involved. If Austen were publishing today, would she be considered a romance writer?

2. Austen lovers and science fiction readers feel a similar intense connection to books. Are there more book communities you know of that engage with a like passion? Why these and not others?

3. Many science fiction readers also love Austen. Why do you suppose this is true? Do you think many Austen readers love science fiction?

Bernadette's Questions

 

1. One of the reasons we don't know more about Austen is that her sister, Cassandra, destroyed many of her letters, finding them too personal, or feeling they reflected badly on her. How does this make you feel about Cassandra?

2. Do you think it adds to a book to know about the author? Do you care if no author photo is included? Do you assume the author looks nothing like her photo anyway?

3. Do you believe in happy endings? Are they harder to believe in than sad ones? When do you generally read the ending of a book? After the beginning and middle, or before? Defend your choice.

 

Sylvia's Questions

 

1. How many generations back can you go in your own family tree? Are you interested in genealogy? Why or why not?

2. Is love better the second time around? Is a good book better the second time around? Is the book you love the most also the one you reread the most? Is the person you love most the person you want to spend the most time with?

3. Do you ever wish your partner had been written by some other writer, had better dialogue and a more charming way of suffering? What writer would you choose?

I owe many people more than I can say.

Thanks to my daughter, Shannon, who not only read and advised, but also did all my skydiving for me.

Thanks to Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, who each looked over the emerging manuscript more often than any friend should have to, always with encouragement, and always with smart, smart advice.

Thanks to Sean Stewart and Joy Johannessen for their enormous help on the home stretch.

Thanks to Susie Dyer and Catherine Hanson-Tracy, each so generous with her time and expertise.

Thanks to Christopher Rowe for the book's invisible vampires.

Thanks to Christien Gholson for a stolen image, to Dean Karnhopp for a stolen anecdote.

Thanks to the MacDowell Colony and also the Davis Crêpe Bistro for time, space, and really good food.

Thanks as always to Marian Wood and Wendy Weil for so many things over so many years.

And special thanks to the incomparable Anna Jardine.

E
veryone has a private Austen. Mine is the Austen who showed her work to her friends and family and took such obvious pleasure in their responses. Thanks most of all to her, then, for those renewable, rereadable, endlessly fascinating books and everything that's been written about them.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

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