Jane Austen Addict Blog

Celebrate the One-Year Anniversary of the Becoming Jane Fansite--with a contest

The Becoming Jane Fansite, an entertaining and informative site that celebrates Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy,  the world they inhabited, and, of course, the film, is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a quiz/contest.

The site has extended its deadline to enter the contest to May 31, 2008. The prize is a DVD of Becoming Jane.

Click here for details.

Mo' Better Austen

[This is my third guest post for Penguin USA's blog. ]

There were only about two months between the end of The Jane Austen Book Club's run in movie theatres and the beginning of Masterpiece Theatre's months-long Austen extravaganza. Four new films! One new biopic! Two rebroadcasts! Those of us who have to manage a serious Austen habit thought we'd died and gone to Janeite heaven.

Then, on April 6, 2008, it all ended. The end credits rolled on the last installment of Sense and Sensibility, and we were left to fend for ourselves.

The message boards and blogs swelled with the lamentations of Austen fans everywhere. What would we do? Where would we turn?

Of course we had Austen's six novels to re-read, and we would never tire of doing so. And we would continue to play our Austen DVDs till they skipped or our players wore out.

But, like any addict, there's no such thing as enough. We want more. More, I tell you. More.

So, if anyone out there in the world of film and television is listening, please take note: There can never be too many adaptations of Pride and Prejudice. Or Emma. Or Sense and Sensibility. Or Northanger Abbey. Or Persuasion. Or Mansfield Park.

Don't think for a second that it's been done before, or "Who needs another Pride and Prejudice." We do. Just look at what Gurinder Chadha did with her Bollywood-meets-Hollywood tribute to Pride and Prejudice, the delightful Bride and Prejudice, which is one of my absolute favorites. In fact, I'd like to see Gurinder Chadha take on the rest of the Austen canon. So think musical. Think multicultural. Think modern retelling. (Remember Clueless? Someone please do that with Northanger Abbey, which is Austen's ultimate coming-of-age story.)   

Here's my latest and fondest idea for the next Austen adaptation: a contemporary, African-American version of Pride and Prejudice starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is one of my favorite actors of all time. I got this idea when I saw him in Talk To Me, which I loved so much I watched it twice in the same week. All I could think of was that his character reminded me of Mr. Darcy, and how perfect this actor would be as the quintessential Austen hero.

Not that we don't want more costume productions set in Regency England. We can never get enough of bonnets and balls and carriages. Just make them all miniseries, okay? We'll even settle for two hours. But no more of those ninety-minute teases that then get snipped even more for the American broadcasts (I'm talking about the latest versions of Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion). Surely you cannot think that the audience who can quote at will from the Colin Firth, five-hour Pride and Prejudice has a short attention span.

Now that we've established More, let's talk about Better.

Granted, we Austen addicts are so grateful that anyone attempts to adapt our favorite author to the screen that we'll watch whatever you put before us. Then, inevitably, we'll complain about the deletion of a key scene from the book or the actor's anachronistic hairstyle or the mysterious altering of the master's dialogue. But we'll still buy those movie tickets and turn on our TVs. And you know what? We'd buy even more tickets and acquire more DVDs and spread more word-of-mouth if you set your standards higher.

Which is why you should have one of us* on board for your next production. After all, don't you want to make those who know the books well and have an extensive knowledge of the period as happy as you make those who don't?

Not that there's any way to please everyone, and granted, we Janeites can be a picky bunch. Nevertheless, we could have told you that when you changed the pivotal "letter scene" in the latest Persuasion to a long-distance marathon, millions of Janeites would collectively groan, look to the heavens, and ask "Why?" I liked the film in spite of it, but I could have liked it a whole lot better.

We don't really expect you to have one of us on the set, but it sure would be nice. (And I mean that in the Henry Tilney way.*) In the meantime, keep rolling out those films and minis. Soon. Please?

*We can easily be found in the membership rolls of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) or in the Jane Austen Society (JAS) of the UK). Operators are standing by.

**See Northanger Abbey, Volume I, Chapter XIV.

Protagonists R US

[This is my second guest post for Penguin USA's blog.]

Ever assume that the protagonist of a novel is a self-portrait of the author? I have.

I make the author-equals-protagonist assumption so often that I have to laugh at myself when I catch myself at it. For example, I was happily reading Literacy and Longing in L.A., the story of a bibliophile who uses books for comfort and escape (oh how I could relate to that), when my fuzzy cocoon of protagonist/author/me kindredness broke open upon the protagonist's announcing her dislike for Jane Austen. What?! My favorite author scorned by the book-loving heroine of a book I really like?

After the initial shock passed, I reconnected with the heroine. After all, poor misguided thing, look what she was missing out on: Jane Austen. It didn't even occur to me that her tastes might not be shared by her creators, coauthors Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack. In fact, when I was about to meet Jennifer and Karen as my fellow panelists at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I actually felt a bit of trepidation. Would these Austen-hating authors snub me? After all, the title of my novel, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, says it all.

No, I told myself, that's just plain silly. And of course, they were absolutely lovely. To my surprise, Karen Mack even mentioned the Austen thing during the panel. It seems that she and Jennifer had received quite a lot of angry emails from Jane Austen devotees berating them for their lack of literary taste. Karen wanted it on record that although her protagonist had no use for Austen, both Karen and Jennifer love her.

I was duly chastened. Not that I was one of the people who had fired off an angry email (nor did I have an impulse to do so). But I, like them, had not questioned my assumption that author equals protagonist.

As an author, I should have known better. After all, many a reader has assumed that at least parts of Courtney, the protagonist of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, are exactly like me. And I don't mean just her taste in books. The question is usually couched in polite language, e.g., "How much of Courtney is you?" But I imagine what they really want to know is do I thrive on high drama, consider vodka to be one of the four basic food groups, and can I "be had," as Bette Davis famously quipped in All About Eve, "for the price of a cocktail, like a salted peanut."    

Notice I'm not answering the questions. [Pauses to sip from huge martini glass.]

See? You fell for it.

Here is the real answer: Authors are like actors. We step inside the minds of the characters who speak to us, we hear what they say, and we become them, we live inside their worlds—while we are writing, that is. Not that we don't think about them all the time when we're away from our desks, hear them inside our heads, see scenes unfolding. But we still know the difference between them and us.

At least I hope we do.

Why Men Should Read Jane Austen

[This is my first guest post for my publisher's blog (Penguin Group):]

Men of the world, take note: Your testosterone levels will not plummet if you read Jane Austen.

Nor will you meet with this fate:

Fear not, for here is a partial list of famous men (and very manly men, I might say) who are Austen lovers and not ashamed of being so:

Authors T.C. Boyle (Talk Talk, and a hilarious short story called I Dated Jane Austen), Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policemen's Union), Paul Auster  (The New York Trilogy), Ken Follet (Eye of the Needle) Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day), and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting); director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting); and Dwyane Wade of the Miami Heat.

Here's what Dwyane Wade had to say about Pride and Prejudice:

“It's one of my favorite books, which usually surprises people. I guess they wonder how a love story from Regency England could be relevant to a 21st century basketball player from the Southside of Chicago. Class struggle, overcoming stereotypes and humble beginnings, getting out of your own way and letting love take over: these are things I can relate to, definitely.”

And here's what Phil Hilton, ex-editor of UK men's magazine Nuts, said about Austen to BBC News:

"[Austen] is fun, dry, ironic - as funny as any male writer out there," he says.

"She is about more than romance, that's just the engine that drives the plot along. Unfortunately when adapted for film and TV the good stuff often ends up on the cutting room floor in favour of a handsome actor walking out of a lake."

Still think Austen is just for women?

Okay, here is perhaps a more compelling reason for men to read Jane Austen: It will make you a chick magnet. So will watching one of the popular Austen film adaptations. Or even reading an Austen-inspired book like Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. Case in point from an email I received:

My son Jack told me his friend Andy had met a really hot woman (Lisa) and discovered on their first awkward date that she was a fan of Jane Austen.  Over a beer, Andy confessed to Jack that he had no idea what Lisa was talking about but wanted to find ways to impress her.  I told Jack about you and Confessions; and suggested that he tell Andy to check out your web site for Austen insight and knowledge before going on his next date.  Jack is now Andy's hero, Andy and Lisa are talking about getting married, and I feel like Yoda - thanks to you.

Full disclosure: the author of this email is a male friend who likely would not have thought to pick up my book were he not my friend. But he's glad he did. So are Jack and Andy.

So are an ever-increasing group of men who tell me how much they enjoyed my book because of its time-travel aspects.

No, Jane Austen's works do not have time travel. But they have something more important: timelessness. So open your minds, O Men of the Modern World, and read Jane Austen.

This has been a public service announcement of Women Who Love Men Who Love Austen.