So, what was Austen's best book (apart from Pr&Pr)

I have gone for Emma - though I love Persuasion.

Emma is the richest of her books, I think - and most full of what I find her most important quality - the macro in the micro - that is, her work reflects so well the reality that most of our most soul-shaping and reality shaping decisions come in the form of the small and intimate - like Emma's rudeness to Miss Bates at the picnic...

My mother's quite the Janeite and she prefers Emma.

I voted for "Emma" because that's the Austen novel I read in grad school (a course in the Victorian novel). I was a bit young to appreciate what she was doing then--Dickens and Thackeray were much more my cup of tea at the time. I must revisit Jane now that I'm, ahem, a bit older...

I voted for Persuasion, but I love them all.

I broke the tie and voted for Persuasion. I think that it has the best character development, and shows the maturity of her style. So tragic to have died so young, when she had just gotten rolling.

Alas, it's sad that so many writers die so young. Although I cannot find major fault with any completed Austen novel, it would have been interesting to see more work of hers in the mould of 'Persuasion,' (though I love Emma, such a wonderful character.) But it seems to happen to a lot of people, a few of the more famous being: Sylvia Plath killed herself just when she started dumping the thesaurus and iambic pentameter in favour of her own buzzing style; Anne Brontë died after the tremendous 'Tenant of Wildfell Hall;' I shudder when thinking of Emily Brontë's young death... I wonder what she could have produced as her second book.



What do you all think about people hi-jacking Pride and Prejudice? So far, I have seen a sequel that completely ignores P&P's ending and turns into some ludicrous murder mystery, and much more...

I'm against any author who hijacks another, more famous author. It seems like a pathetic way to be published and find an audience, because it's someone else's audience.

It's OK, though, with genre fiction. The kind of book where you read one and then want to read another right away. As Victoria Nelson, the author of "The Secret Life of Puppets", points out, people usually don't read a novel by Kafka then immediately want to read another one. It's different with mysteries.

(Speaking of hijacking, I don't mean to hijack this thread--or antagonize any mystery fans!)

D'artagnan--

Most of the literary coat tail types fall far short of the authors they adore and exploit.

Still the "Famous Author as Detective" is a part of the larger blurring of the distinctions between Fiction and Fact. Chaos, here we come.

Interesting idea, Noddy. Not sure what you mean by the "Famous Author as Detective"--is that a genre? If so, what do you mean by the blurring of fiction and fact.

Off the top of my head, I can remember Jane Austin, Mark Twain and Jack London all featured as fictional detectives.

Now I can't damn historical novels--I've read far too many of them with a great deal of enjoyment. All the same, I think a historical novel shouldn't be written until the major characters are dead and buried.

Oliver Stone with his fictionalized documentaries is one example of the blurring between fact and fiction in the name of entertainment. (Now I confess I am no a movie buff--I haven't seen all that many movies and my opinion here is based on reviews).

Trying to pull thoughts together here.....

Politicians look for a "spin" to the story--if the facts are presented with the right window-dressing, the facts become less damaging.

The television news media and the Pentagon p.r. types turn the Rescue of Jessica Lynch into a Stirring Moment in a Glorious War--and then sound a bit huffy wen the Iraqi hospital staff point out that there was no need to kick the door down.

The amoral, self-appointed dark stars of Columbine High School video-tape their planning so that the world will appreciate their derring-do.

Lines are blurring: Public behavior and private behavior. Fact and Fiction. Truth and Palatable Truth.

No great damage is done when someone takes pen in hand and says "What If Jane Austin were a detective?" The potential for damage is there when someone announces (and I heard them): "I'm not voting for Arlen Specter (for the senate) because of his actions in the movie about JFK in Dallas.

Agreed re current docu-dramas. How anyone can sleep at night who created the TV show on the Scott Peterson trial (which hasn't even happened yet) is beyond me. Imagining Jane Austen as a detective is relatively harmless by comparison. No great literary achievement, but what the hell.

Now, if someone had Jane Austen as a superhero, that might be cool. Or Jane Austen as prime minister. She could apply the lessons from her novels in the realm of 21st Century world affairs.

All is grist to the mill

Yep.

Still, at some point , someone is going to try to sow the wind, reap the whirlwind and we'll find out that the mills of the gods grind slow--but they grind exceeding fine.

A more complete partial list

(http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/CC/cj-writers.html):

Wilkie Collins
Charles Dickens
A. Conan Doyle
Ernest Hemmingway
Dr. Johnson
Jack London
William Shakespeare
Gertrude Stein
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde

Say, Noddy, who wrote that story? "They Grind Exceeding Slow"--was that it? I was made to read it in high school, which generally meant it had some sort of "theme" we were supposed to derive. Might be fun to look at after all these years...

D'artagnan--

My mother raised her children with a copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations in her head, so I know the quote (sort of George Herbert but probably modified by mama) but know not of a short story by that title.

Believe me but the time my mother got to "grind exceeding fine" you cold hear the millstones straining.

Noddy--

I did some Googling during the past few minutes. Found the Herbert reference; seems like a German said it first. I think the story I'm trying to remember was by a Mississippian by Ben Ames Williams. Somehow, I thought the story was set in New England, but I maybe confusing it with the Shirley Jackson story they rammed down our throats in high school at about the same time. "The Lottery"...

D'Artagnan--

I had the luck to find "The Lottery" on my own. The moral is so clear, I ache for anyone who had the Lesson Taught w/ Footnotes.

O'Henry might have used a title mentioning the mills of the gods. He wrote hundreds of stories--all with the "twist".

I wonder how many kids today have a working mental image of a grist mill?

O'Henry, for sure, was one for irony. Though, oddly enough, I saw a cartoon version of "The Gift of the Magi" recently, and I was rather touched by it. The sense I got, for the first time, was not that they were foolish, but that they really loved each other...

What is this Scott Peterson trial?




That sounds like a very, very interesting- if mad- idea--- I should do something like that after this book that I'm writing now. I've never heard of /using/ another writer in a book: the Oscar Wilde one--playwright, poet and unlikely detective in 1880s Denver, Colorado-- amazes me; what would he think?!