The Austen Marathon (in which D expounds on the ups and downs of being 'Lost in Austen')

I like a challenge. I like a twist. I'm a fan of the gimmick, when it suits me. And I really like allusions to stuff I know in my cultural consumption (i.e. pop culture references in movies and books and songs). It's part of the thrill for me of things like High Fidelity, Gilmore Girls, Love Walked In, a lot of hip-hop, etc. If I don't get the reference (but yet know enough even to recognize that there IS a reference), I hie me directly to Ye Olde Wikipaedia to "improve my mind".

Recently I picked up Karen Fowler's The Jane Austen Book Club in the library. Movie notwithstanding (I don't remember thinking it was anything to shake a stick at), the concept seemed to me to promise a pretty good book, so I checked it out.

Now, in spite of my love of allusion, I have this problem with book club-style references -- see, my short-term memory for factoids, trivia, quotes and the like is, well, poor. I have trouble remembering anything beyond "It was awesome!" or "There was that girl, you know, the one with the... hair... and... you know, the dude, whatshisname..."

I thought this deficit might dampen some of the joy of reading a good book about life's comparability, in plot and character, to other good books I've read in the moderately distant past. A reference to "that bit where [Willoughby] confesses to Elinor" in Sense and Sensibility would leave me mostly lost, which would be annoying, and might or might not affect my better understanding of the book itself.

So what did I do? I checked six Jane Austen novels out of the library, and began rereading them in tandem with The Jane Austen Book Club, in the order in which they're addressed in its chapters. Obviously.

(aside: And I wonder why my clutter's toppling over...)

I've only read one and a half so far (finished Emma, started Mansfield Park), and consequently, my pace through Book Club is sloooow. But not as slow as it could be, since I convinced myself to cheat a little by skipping Sense and Sensibilty, which I've read within the last couple years AND own the movie version of. I plan to do this with Pride and Prejudice as well, though I still have both books handy.

So far my little Austen Marathon is going well. I feel like it's not only helped me enjoy the direct references in the book-discussion parts of the book (which are interspersed with parts dealing with the lives of the characters themselves), and the more indirect yet more important comparisons between the characters' lives and personalities and those of Austen's own characters. It's also really nice to reread Austen's books, and for a purpose (so as not to feel humdrum and boring about rereading six books in a row without venturing into anything new!) and get something new out of them through Fowler's characters' very different takes. It never occurred to me that Marianne might not have been perfectly happy marrying Brandon... but now that I think about it, love may have had little to do with it.

Though the women in the book are appalled by his unconventional spins, I'm really enjoying the character Grigg's ideas -- Austen's characters would totally work in sitcoms! "The Elinor Show". Or Everybody Loves Raymond.

Anyway, perhaps more on this later -- or perhaps something new!