hello, self:

Yeah, it's embarrassing and ridiculous, but sometimes (always?) Stuff White People Like is, well, completely and totally right.

It is a guarantee that whenever it is announced that a popular book is being turned into a movie, white people will get upset. This is partly due to their fear that something they love will be made accessible to more people and thus enjoyed by more people which immediately decreases the amount of joy a white person can feel towards the original property. Yes, it’s complicated....

In other news, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. Nope, kid you not. Yes, I'll try not to judge a book by its cover (TSS). Although I can maybe judge a little for just blatantly rehashing the same idea later in the same year, no? It would be like someone riffing on brilliant title to go here by creating pretty good title to go here.

Or not, since my blog has yet to net millions of dollars.



(I must admit this is a rather fitting end for Willoughby, no?)

happily ever after, you say....

Ok. I may have told you this one before, so I apologize.

But, briefly, when I was in first year, I wrote a paper about the downside of Elizabeth Bennet's happy ending. My point was that Elizabeth, like Sophia in Tom Jones, had to sacrifice everything she stood for and believed in to fit the author's idea of a happy ending. Which, in turn, fit the expectations of their time.

Drop Elizabeth in 2009, and Mr. Darcy's a snob she best wave off. (Ten years on I kind of think the world is lacking in Mr. Darcys, though.) And Sophia? Tom Jones is a ridiculous, Don Juan-lite figure. If he'd been a little more strategic and a little less accident-prone, he'd have been the John Mayer of the 18th Century. Girl: Walk Away.

Similarly -- spoiler alert -- Marianne Dashwood is a victim of her happy ending. Yes, marrying Colonel Brandon sets her for life. Even though he's 19 years older than her. And poorly drawn. And boring as all get-out.

I'm obviously not the first person to say that in the last 200 years. Sorry. And don't even get me started on my dislike of Edward Ferrars. He goes bumbling through the book, all, "Oops, did I lead you on? Did I not mention I'm engaged? Well, if I'm lucky, I'll get dumped, and we'll get married and I'll irritate the hell out of you forever, Elinor!"

But here's an excerpt from near the end of the book -- as if Austen herself were really reaching to tie it all up with a neat little bow:

Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to
discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract by her conduct her
most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in
life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively
friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another -- and that other, a man who
had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment whom,
two years before, she had considered too old to be married, and who still sought
the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!

I have a feeling that, in late-18th/early-19th century parlance, the flannel waistcoat is the rough equivalent to the windbreaker.

In other news....

• The next book club selection is Obasan. No date yet set for discussion, but the next hostess is crossing her fingers the novel gets the TSS Cool Seal of Approval.
• I love this bit from the April Vogue profile of Beyonce Knowles: "One senses that Beyonce wants to join the very small pantheon of pop superstars -- Cher, Diana, Barbra -- who went on to big dramatic-film careers. If she stays away from silly movies like Obsessed, she might actually have a shot at it...." Yow.
• I'm taking a low-brow (?) detour, reading Love the One You're With. Basic premise so far? Happily married woman happens to pass an ex-boyfriend on a random street in New York, sending her into a spiral. Excerpt?

"My favourite movie of all time is probably When Harry Met Sally....
What I had yet to learn, though, is that things are seldom as neat and tidy
as that starry-eyed anecdote you share documentary-style on a couch. What I
figured out over time is that almost always, when you hear those stories
from married couples, there is a little poetic license going on, a romantic
spin, polished to a high shine over time. And unless you marry your high
school sweetheart (and even sometimes then), there is usually a not-so-glorious back story. There are people and places and events that lead you to your final relationship, people and places and events you'd prefer to forget or at least gloss over. In the end, you can slap a pretty label on it -- like serendipity or fate. Or you can believe that it's just the random way life unfolds." (p. 7-8)

Elinor

She was stronger alone, and her own good sense so well supported her that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be. p. 127

all my embarrassing secrets

Friends: "Your British accent is really, really terrible."
Me: "Hey! Just this morning I was reading Sense and Sensibility out loud to myself and I sounded great!"
Friend: "NO! That can't be true!"
Other friend: "It's her secret single behaviour...."

I'm not midway through Sense and Sensibility, but I must admit I've seriously come around on Elinor.

Yes, she's boring (not Fanny Price boring, but still). Yes, she's not as romantic as Marianne. But she's also not as silly, frankly. The way I think of Wuthering Heights as a teenage girl's fantasy, I think of Marianne as a heroine to the Crushing on Zac Efron crowd. (That's who the kids like these days, right? Zac Efron? Is it bad, by the way, that I too walked out of 17 Again with a wee crush on him?)

Elinor's a heroine to the been-there, done-that, keep your chin up for the love of dignity, set. I think Jane Austen may have liked her better.

And the girl can take a slap in the face like no one's business.

Also, just started reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking for book club -- a very strange juxtaposition. [Oh my God. Wikipedia says this book is a classic in "mourning literature." Is there such a thing? Mourning literature? How is that helpful? Of course, it's not supposed to be "helpful," I suppose. For that, one moves on to the self-help section? Ok, stopping my not-based-on-any-facts-at-all rant.]

I've been warned about this one: Writing's gorgeous but the chances of getting seriously depressed are good.

The book starts on this note -- words I imagine typed, zombie-like, soon after the author's husband's death:

Life changes fast.
Life changes in the instant.
You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
The question of self-pity.

romance

"A woman of seven and twenty," said Marianne, after pausing a moment, "can never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse for the sake of the provision and security of a wife.... It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem only a commercial exchange in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other." -- p. 49

Yes folks, I'm reading Sense and Sensibility, digging on Marianne's blissful romantic ignorance and Elinor's painful down-to-earth sense.




Ooh, and thanking my lucky stars I'm not 17 anymore. But rather, erm, 27. (Yikes. Clearly I'm at the advanced age wherein any romantic attachment would merely be me playing nursemaid to my older, sickly lover. Any takers?)

(I just wrote, "any takers?" on my blog. While talking about my love life. Le sigh.)

Besides evaluating the merits of high school reunions (skipping) and sleeping (true bliss!) and taking full advantage of brackets (grammar is for losers), I really did think a lot about romance this weekend.

In part because I read my first romance novel in a very long while. At least, my first true romance novel in a long while -- it was a joint venture written by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, but much smoother than their last outing. Last time, I found myself skipping all the parts written by Mayer, whereas this time I didn't really notice the switch between writing styles. And, like all Crusie novels, it kind of avoided the typical "woman is five-foot-eight, size six, drives red sports car and listens to Springsteen" cliches. Instead, woman is plump and loves food and is given to bouts of scary, scary anger that are rather unbecoming. (Jane would not approve, let's be honest. The woman preferred William Cowper's sleep-inducing religious poetry to Alexander Pope's joking. Yeesh.)

Bizarrely, I sort of forgot these stories end with happily ever after. (Spoiler, sorry.) In fact, this one really had to reach to get to the ever after part. And at points I wasn't sure I bought the whole Agnes-softens-wants-long-term-relationship-with-hitman scenario. Or, alternatively, hitman-softens-starts-picturing-Agnes-as-wife-and-mother-to-his-children play. Can five days really work such magic? And should it?

Clearly I've been reading too much Margaret Laurence of late. Now, I've only just read two books by now, but I'm thinking Laurence is not a big one for the fairy tale endings. Which is pretty awesome -- perhaps even skewing my sense of reality back to.... reality....?

"Does one have to choose between two realities? If you think you love two men, the heart-throb column in the daily paper used to say when I was still consulting it daily, then neither one is for you. If you think you contain two realities, perhaps you contain none." -- p. 150

channeling Austen

(May I preface this entry by apologizing to my friend Erin, who thinks she does not like Jane Austen -- and so is probably sick of reading about her on this blog -- even though she’s only ever read Persuasion. Not that I could ever judge someone for making such a decision since I think I do not like Mordecai Richler even though I have only ever read the first 30 pages of Barney’s Version. Three times. But Erin has never read Pride and Prejudice, regarded in most circles as Austen’s best book and one of the best English-language works of the late 17th century.So I think I’ve finally found her.

The One.

The character created by Jane Austen who I can best identify with.

If Austen’s women were characters in Sex and the City, I think most people would identify with Elizabeth Bennet the way most women think they are shades of Carrie Bradshaw. Miss Bennet has the best lines, Ms. Bradshaw the best shoes. Miss Bennet sees the irony all around her, ditto Ms. Bradshaw. Mr. Darcy? Mr. Big.

For those who see themselves a bit more Charlotte, I offer up Sense and Sensibility’s Marianne -- ever the dreamy, frankly not-swift romantic.

Samantha? The sexually avant garde Ms. Jones does not lend herself to 17th- or early 18th- century comparison. Mr. Wickham was too much a cad. Mary Crawford too sly. Mr. Willoughby too stupid.

Now, I have always thought of myself as something of a Miranda. Career-driven. Cake-driven. Prone to obsessing the failures of technology.

Miranda isn’t just commitment-phobic. She doesn’t need to be in a romantic relationship.

Love it, love her.

Love Emma.

Just hear me out for a second.

I have no familiarity whatsoever with Northanger Abbey. But the balance of Austen’s work is about relationships between men and women. Not love stories, really, though certainly stories about the importance of marriage.

Not necessarily marriage for love -- though that’s all well and good if you can put aside your pride and your prejudice, etc. etc. Instead, marriage to keep a woman going, keep her under a roof with food in her mouth, yadda yadda.

But Austen’s Emma deals with a girl who does not need to marry at all. Emma Woodhouse will do perfectly well, thank you very much, with a very large inheritance. And, while “it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” not so for a single woman in possession of the same.

Thank you very much.

Yes, Emma is snobby. Very smart, but given to stupidity because she lets her imagination run away with her.

(Me! Me!)

But she isn’t some wimpy Anne Elliot. Or sad sack Fanny Price. Or chin-up martyr Elinor Dashwood. Or vaguely bull-shitting Elizabeth Bennet.

Emma doesn’t just think she doesn’t need a man.

She knows it.

She thrives on friendships and family. She honestly wants for nothing.

Take this haughty line, in the middle of a heated argument with her sister’s brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley:

“Oh! To be sure,” cried Emma. “It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anyone who asks her.”

I know, I know, just halfway through the book I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyone who’s familiar with the Austen formula, or who has watched Clueless, knows what will happen. Emma will surely get her come-uppance. Probably more than once. She’ll realize snobbery is bad, or at least not to be celebrated as a virtue. She’ll hook up with the naggy brother-in-law. Who seemed rather less naggy and more hot when played by Paul Rudd.

I guess I might just be early Emma, rather than fully-developed Emma.

Sort of like being early Miranda rather than lives-in-Brooklyn-with-a-baby-and-a-puppy-and-a-bartender-husband-and-his-Alzheimer’s-stricken-mother Miranda.