Jane Austen, Amy Winehouse, Life versus Art

One of my guilty pleasures is award shows. My excuse is that I need to keep up with the current films, music and Broadway plays. Last Sunday the pleasures were guiltier than usual when Grammy Awards had the added soap opera of whether singer, Amy Winehouse, who was nominated for six awards, would be able to attend despite visa problems and substance abuse issues. Ironically one of the songs she won an award for was "Rehab" explaining why she wasn’t going to rehab, while one of obstacles she faced in attending was the fact that she actually is now in rehab.

The Grammy awards, however, were scheduled opposite the PBS airing of the first few hours of Pride and Prejudice, the Colin Firth version, so I missed them. I was still curious enough about Winehouse that I checked her out online
Amy Winehouse

Wow.

She has an amazing voice that is strong enough to hold up against a baritone saxophone and a Phil Specter-style Wall of Sound. The songs on the Back to Black album stand out like dark, twisted jewelry in the glittery "girl group" setting. Layered, ironic, funny, dangerous, magnetic, sensual. Grafting her bad girl persona onto the girl group sound demonstrates a wicked genius. Those songs invariably feature lyrics like: "Nothing you can do can make me untrue to my guy." A major contrast to Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good." I haven’t been so amused since I heard a gay male group sing "He’s So Fine."

What, you may well ask, did this teach me about Jane Austen?

Well, the public buzz about Winehouse is that she’s a bad role model. (Goodness, a popular musician being a bad role model! Most unusual.) Sorry, my point was that she’s taken a whole raft of personal problems and turned them into gorgeous works of art.

Jane Austen, a lifelong impoverished spinster who struggled with living on the crumbs of family charity, didn’t even see all her novels published in her life. Yet she created a world so seductive that many of us go there repeatedly.

PBS aired a biographical film, Miss Austen Regrets, on February 3rd that I did not post here about it just after I saw it because it was so painful for me to watch. The film tried to scrape up some romance in Austen’s not-very-eventful life. They turned excerpts from her letters to her sister and her niece into dialog. I’ve heard others say that they found these exchanges witty, but they really don’t dramatize well. Nothing in her novels suggests that she would be that cruel and bitter in a social setting. The problem is that, unlike the surgically deft dialog in her novels, the scathing wit in Austen’s letters was never meant to be spoken aloud in social setting. It was very private and meant for intimate correspondents she trusted.

In the last scene of Miss Austen Regrets, after she and Jane agonize about their poverty and Jane dies, the surviving sister, Cassandra, burns most of her letters. Really the only thing I took away from that film was a more complete understanding of why this was necessary. People look at Austen’s life and want her to be one of the heroines of her novels, but she is their creator, and that is so much more. It would take a biographical genius to portray Austen's life in a way that showed the magic of what she created in her fiction.

We want artists to be saints, but they have other work to do. Their task is to built dream vessels to transport us into their own worlds, to share their visions, songs and stories. Then like all other humans, the artists have to return to real life to deal with it as best they can can.

I have been through substance abuse problems both as a participant and an observer, and I can see how Amy Winehouse is walking a narrow path at the edge of a cliff. I hope she can come to safer ground soon. In the meantime it’s not fair to try to force her to also carry the burden of being a role model, just as it’s cruel to jam Jane Austen into the role of disappointed spinster--we don't know her well enough to say that and conversely we know her too well to limit her that way.


February 5 to 16, 1978 I read:

Breakdown, N. S. Sotherland
My note: A psychologist’s personal account of manic depression with some gossipy put-down sketches of the founders of the main schools of psychotherapy.

Love, Honor and Dismay, Elizabeth Harrison

By Force of Will, the Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway, Scott Donaldson
My note: Much better than Hemingway & the Sun Set, which was remarkable only for a picture of Duff

The Professor Game, Richard D. Mandell
My Note: Fairly witty, which is rare, but with that characteristic poverty of joie de vivre one finds among existentialists. So I’ll say witty and gritty.

The Vagabond, Colette
My note: Wow.

Streets, Actions, Alternatives, Raps: A Report on the Decline of the Counterculture, John Stickney
A 1971 view


February 5 to 16, 2008 I read:

The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, Carol Karlsen
Interesting book, originally a dissertation about who was singled out as witches n Colonial New England and why. Many insights into fears of women that are still alive and flourishing.
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/salem/scholarship/karlsenrev.html

Not persuaded...

Just a few words about the Masterpiece Theater's adaptation Persuasion. Sigh. Okay, somehow the confines of the 90-minute length inspired screenwriter Davies to chop the material up in a very odd way. I hear some Austen fans having induced friends or spouses to watch this as a rare treat ended up spending a lot of time explaining what the heck was happening. This is not good, and I hope anyone who saw this Persuasion as an intro to Austen will check out the '95 film--which I've widgeted up in the sidebar. It was totally coherent, heartfelt and made sense!

For those who already know Persuasion, who want to watch this, I'll just say that there were some very odd stagings. Maybe the idea was to "chick-lit-ize" it. I was interested to find that the ardent Austenphiles on the Republic of Pemberley shared my disbelief at the insertion of a "Run to the airport" penultimate scene that has graced so many chick lit flicks. Only in this case, we had Anne Elliot and her invalid(!) friend Mrs. Smith pelting through the streets of Bath, with the camera following, hollering out important plot points. The fact that they were shot from behind did not help. Someone asked why Mrs. Smith needed a nurse to look after her if she was capable of competing in the Bath Marathon.

I don't trust myself to discuss what happened to the pivotal scene where Captain Wentworth is writing a letter and eavesdropping on Anne Elliott. Cutting that scene was like cutting the heart out of Persuasion. The place where Davies put Anne's moving speech about the constancy of women turned it into a throwaway.

And furthermore, the only thing I can say about Rupert Penry-Jones, the actor playing Captain Wentworth, is that he is quite handsome but looks entirely too sheltered to have just worked his way up to captain in the British Navy and made his fortune in booty from the Napoleonic wars. At the very least they might have given him a little scar or a sunburn. But that might just be my fondness for Ciaran Hinds in the '95 version talking. As they say, your mileage may vary.

I’m liking this year better already!

This past week I read Holly Lisle’s Tayln, which took me just where I needed to go—away, but with fascinating characters in a believable “other” world. It was good enough that I was up till 1:00 a.m. to read the end. I also discovered Holly Lisle's web page with some great stuff for readers and writers!

Then there's heaven on earth starting today for lovers of the works of Jane Austen. PBS is presenting dramatizations of all the Jane Austen novels, beginning tonight, January 13th, with the last, though certainly not the least heartfelt, Persuasion.

The URL above also offers is a great interview with the legendary Andrew Davies, whose 1996 dramatization of Pride and Prejudice is still the gold standard for Austen (and which PBS will air Feb 10, 17 and 24th).

I had to laugh at PBS's Online Dating Profiles for the men of Jane Austen’s books!

January 6 to 12, 1978 I read:

Working, I do It for the Money, Bill Owens, author of Suburbia.
Note from 1978: Actually a photo collection, (Suburbia was also an interesting book—I read it in a bookstore in SF)
Note 2008—what? It’s a photo book I looked at all the pictures, standing up in a bookstore. It’s not like I could have afforded to buy the book, good as it was.

The Far Side of Madness, Perry
Note from 1978: Didn’t finish

Close to Colette, Maurice Goudeket

The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank, Erma Bombeck

Healing Benefits of Acupressure, Acupuncture without Needles, F. M. Houston
1978 note: Quite useful, Keats Publishing, Inc., must get several copies

January 6 to January 12, 2008 I read:

Tayln, Holly Lisle

Fanny Price, born to be mild

This past week, I was drawn back to re-read Mansfield Park after watching the beautiful but not-spectacularly-satisfying film adaptation written and directed by Patricia Rozema. The review below dislikes the movie. I liked the movie as a kind of meditation on Mansfield Park, but I missed the “real” heroine—Fanny Price as Austen wrote her.

One controversial aspect of the film was Rozema’s focus (it qualifies as a subplot) on what one character calls, “the people who pay for the party.” She takes pains to point out the ugliness of aristocratic families who derived most of their income from the slave trade and/or slave labor on colonial plantations. I think that added a reasonable dimension to the film and probably came close to expressing Austen’s actual views on slavery (see quote below).

In the DVD director’s comments segment, Rozema uses the word “prig” to refer to Fanny, and her solution is to give meek and mild Fanny a personality transplant. She uses material from Jane Austen’s own life – including impulsively accepting an unwise proposal followed by the next morning’s anguished withdrawal of that acceptance. That happened in real life to Jane Austen, but not to Fanny Price in the book Mansfield Park.

Rozema also has Fanny writing wildly satirical adventure tales, using excerpts from the actual stories a young Jane Austen wrote for her family’s amusement. In the movie Fanny indulges in Elizabeth-Bennet-style teasing of other characters. Fanny Price as Austen created her is missing from the film. Maybe she’s just not movie material, but I missed her.

It’s clear to me after last week's re-reading of Mansfield Park that Fanny Price had what we used to call an inferiority complex, and would nowadays call low self-esteem. Carol Shields’ 1998
salon article uses the words “wimpy, passive and “doormat” to describe poor Fanny, but Shields also gives a very keen perception of why and how she got there and how she manages to keep a light of spirit intact and burning. Raised to age 10 in degradation and poverty, then scooped up and dropped into an aristocratic household where she is daily hammered with demands to be grateful for every crumb that falls her way.

How could Fanny not be shy and reserved? She might not have survived if she was not very, very cautious, living in a snakes’ nest of indifference, neglect and cruelty. The life of the mind and spirit are her only refuge. The suspense in the book concerns Fanny’s survival. She can't go back to a life of grim poverty with her parents and 9 siblings in Portsmouth. This was not a time when women could work outside the home. The best she could hope for would be marriage or a kind of slavery as an attendant to a female relative. Fanny's hopes for happiness seem as impossible to the reader as they do to her throughout the book. (I also noticed as I never had in previous readings how precarious Fanny’s health was in the book and it brought home how close Austen was to her death at 41 when she wrote this book, which was published posthumously.)

In regard to Rozema’s strong (and graphic) statements about how owners of plantation in Antigua financed their lavish lifestyles through the use of slave labor, there is evidence that Austen would have agreed about this evil. The Republic of Pemberly website has a word search feature and I found the word "slave" used 3 times in the book. Once to refer to the actual slave trade, and twice to refer to women's situations.

In regards to the slavery theme, I found a scholarly, but interesting article tracing Jane Austen’s probable views on slavery, based on correspondence with her naval officer brother who hated having to protect the slaving ships, and a list of books and authors she reported loving, including prominent abolitionists.

One of the responsibilities of Commander Francis Austen was to engage in policing activities in the Americas, but he was authorized to intercept only English vessels. He reported on his deep revulsion not merely at the inhumane and heinous treatment of the African slave cargo on the Middle Passage, but also at the entire slave system, which he observed at first hand in other parts of the world as well. Commenting on the "harshness and despotism" of landholders and their managers in the West Indian context he writes that "slavery however it may be modified is still slavery." [footnote omitted] It is clear from this documentation that Francis Austen was, to his credit, truly appalled by the institution of slavery as such and, in this respect, as Southam points out (loc.cit.), he was considerably ahead of his time. In view of the attested close relationship Austen had with her sailor brothers, the elder Francis and the younger Charles, it is highly probable that she shared the former's unequivocal antipathy to the system.

article



08-03-77 to 08-11-77 I read:

America in the Movies, Michael Wood

Michael Wood is evidently now teaching at Princeton and still publishing books and articles. Here’s his
review of The Simpsons movie

Inside Story, Brit Hume

High Stakes, Dick Francis

Note: My unfavorite Francis book
’07 note – I forget why I didn’t like this one. I’ve read every book I could find, and studied many of them to see how he achieves that effortless storytelling (I wish I could say I found the secret, but in any event it was time well spent.)

Who is Teddy Villanova?, Thomas Berger
Note: An esoteric cop story is a contradiction in terms

Thomas Berger info.


August 3, 2007 to August 11, 2007 I read:


Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

Jane Austen, hell, heaven, and perfume

I won’t go into exhaustive detail about why, but I’ve had enough of a disruptive month that I’ve been communing with Jane Austen (and a little with Virginia Woolf) these past few weeks. I don’t do images much—but I’ll share with you an image that paradoxically helped me stay sane.

Money and the lack thereof are an issue Virginia Woolf dissects so brilliantly in A Room of One’s Own.

Jane Austen also considers women’s issues around money in all her works, as she said in an 1816 letter: “Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.”

While coping with my own employment drama the past few weeks, I found it useful to think of some of the things Virginia Woolf did to support herself before she received the famous liberating inheritance that she wrote about in the aforementioned book.

"I earned a few pounds by addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers.” A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

I must report that for the old and broken among us, the employment opportunities are somewhat, although not vastly, improved since she wrote those words in 1928. I seem to have found a momentary harbor, so I am now calm enough to write this blog.

But to get back some of my strategies for staying sane while losing sleep over survival issues. I read (and re-read) only three books. (Contrasting with 14 books I picked up in 1977 in the same space of time, with an even shakier personal life, but coasting on youthful vitality!) I also visited ther DVDs of Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, um, more than once.

Why were these so uniquely comforting? Of course, there is sex—or should we say the heartfelt portrayal of youthful passion.

The Republic of Pemberley website provides the graphic I referred to in the first paragraph. It's the last item of their FAQ:

What is "The Look"?

Get ready.
Here.

I was surprised to find that it was the same image that caught my attention. Why should I be surprised? It’s the Bluestocking version of the money shot. But it’s a bit more than that.

The actor and filmmaker’s recreation of the intoxication of young love is like a distillation of the scent of flowers. Spring has gone, but an artfully created perfume stirs a chord that resurrects spring flowers in the heart and mind.

Jane Austen’s books go one better. She re-creates on the page, not only the pleasure of intimacy achieved, but also the satisfaction of integrity rewarded.

That’s the paradox of art. Jane Austen didn’t have that ideal partnership in her life. She never married and died at age 38. I can only speak for myself in saying that at 58 I would contemplate with dismay the vast drain of time and energy that a fulfilling partnership would entail. Of course, a happy ending is just a snapshot in a long story.

Young love pierces our souls (as Frederick says of Anne's words in Persuasion) because it depends on the exquisite sensitivity of innocence, inexperience, ignorance, call it what you will. That naiveté has a season and it does not come again, Botox notwithstanding.

Robert Frost put it well:


Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of- was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?

. . . .

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

To Earthward by Robert Frost From “New Hampshire” 1923.

Well, Frost did seem to have a little S&M thing going there that’s only marginally relevant to what I’m mainly talking about, but never mind. He’s right about how complex things become, and how it catches our breath to remember how simple they once seemed—and perhaps were.


From February 8 to March 11, 1977 I read:

Thirty years ago I had just moved twice in the space of a few months (down to Los Angeles from San Francisco. Then out of the Culver City garage apartment I first landed in, to a more serene studio apartment in West LA where the cockroaches came as single scouts--not in battalions), and was sailing on a questionable sea of temp work. Yet I managed to read or attempt 14 books.

Midnight Baby, Dory Previn

The Psycho Sqaud, William W. Crain

The Romeo Error: A matter of Life and Death, Lyall Watson
Note: couldn’t finish in time – had to return to library. Will try again. (note—so far haven’t, but then it HAS only been 30 years)

The 9th Annual Best SF: 75, Harry Harrison & Brian W. Aldiss, Ed.

The Art of Alfred Hitchcock, Donal Spoto
Note: AH is a Leo- Aug 13! Very fascinating book. I also guessed correctly by the author’s use of the adjective “tenebrous” that he was French.

Tricks and Treats: an anthology of Mystery Stories by the Mystery Writers of America,
Joe Gores and Bill Pronzini, Ed.

Something’s There, Dan Greenberg

The Voices of the Guns, Vin McLellen and Paul Avery

The Aliens, Ed. R. Silverberg

Tetrosomy Two, Oscar Rossiter

The Choirboys, Joseph Wambaugh

The Documents in the Case, Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace

Journey, Robert and Suzanne Massie
Very painful to read, medical students’ disease-I vaguely remember that this book was about a couple coping with spinal cord injury, but I could be wrong.

The Blue Knight, Joseph Wambaugh


From February 8 to March 11, 2007 I read:

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
With some attention to the excellent introduction Penguin Classics edition by Tony Tanner that among other things, speaks to the idea of “the dream of Pemberley” that so many women have mentally inhabited since Austen built the place.

A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

Persuasion, Jane Austen

Old wine, new bottles

The internet came to my rescue once again last week, when I couldn’t locate my paperback copy of Jane Eyre during a week when I was indulging in the stunning BBC dramatization of that work. The BBC site is very cool by the way, Grace Poole's diary was surprisingly touching! But to return to my rescue by the internet--a few days later, while delving into the 1996 (6-hour!) DVD of Pride and Prejudice, I couldn't find that paperback either!

Most classic texts are now available online, so I didn’t have to wait for the delivery of the new copies (or haul out my very heavy Complete Novels of Jane Austen hardcover) to check out how the dramatizations might have changed the sacred texts that have provided emotional healing for me (as for so many others) at various times in my life when it was most needed.

But even the best dramatizations--often the best!--take certain liberties with the text. For example, Jane Eyre’s parting with Rochester after his secret was revealed. I was able to confirm what I kind of remembered from my reading--that no bed was involved in their parting scene in the book (though there was a sofa, it was more used for sobbing than for touching). The breathless chemistry was appropriate to the novel though.

A friend lent me the A&E Pride and Prejudice dramatization, and in return I lent her the 1986 BBC Northanger Abbey, confidently assuring her that Colin Firth was practically a chameleon to be able to play Mr. Darcy in P&P and also play Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, and look so different. Almost like a different person.

Astute readers and BBC aficionados will be way ahead of me here. Colin Firth was so amazingly different-looking in his characterization of Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey because the part was, in fact, played by Peter Firth—another actor entirely. Also excellent--with his own gift for revealing thoughts as well as emotions on screen--just not the same person.

I guess there’s no point in having so many Gracie Allen moments if you can’t laugh at yourself in the process.

At least I discovered that Henry Tilney has his own fan club, who refer to him as "Da Man"--who knew?

My Jane Austen obsession flares often enough that one friend gave me a
Jane Austen Action Figure for a Christmas gift.

I visited The Republic of Pemberley
for the online texts of Pride and Prejudice, and found that Austen summarized, rather than exactly quoting, a great deal of Mr. Darcy’s original, ardent proposal to Elizabeth Bennet, and the A&E dramatization did quite well putting the summary into dialog.

The Republic of Pemberley, by the way, has the subject of each chapter in the link(and a lot of other links to topics in the books).

John Barrymore was of the opinion that stopping to read footnotes while enjoying great works of literature is like answering the doorbell on your honeymoon. I tend to agree. But once you’ve had the enjoyment of a read or two or twelve of some of these books, an appropriate footnote can help deepen the experience. Marital aids, perhaps?


January 21 to February 7, 1977

I can’t help but notice my restless library roving in 1977 brought me home 13 books (some I only partly read, versus the two books, I own but ended up reading online during the same days of 2007).

The Mote in God’s Eye, Niven & Pournell
I enjoyed this book a great deal and have re-read it more than once.
A 30-year-old review goes into the “Crazy Eddie” concept at some length


The Jacqueline Susann Story, Jeffrey Ventura
My note: “effeminate prose” whatever that means.

We’re Going to Make You a Star, Sally Quinn
My note: “a little celebrity watching in the haute monde of the journalism world. Having been fascinated by the Washington Post’s role in investigating Watergate, I read quite a few behind-the-scenes books. My final note was: “The ‘society’ orientation makes me bristle a bit.”Sally Quinn on wikipedia

Lonely in America, Suzanne Gordon,
My note: didn’t finish

Memoirs, Tennessee Williams
My note: Such frankness that one is forced to applaud, yet not particularly painful to read

The Life of Raymond Chandler, Frank McShane
My note: Read some of it. Very sad, dreary
I think that one was really painful to read, although I totally admire his prose, his life was less exuberant and more agonizing than Williams' life.

The Deep, Peter Benchley
My note –Skimpy & trivial but readable. All the villains are black, all the heroes white, coincidence no doubt

Headache: Understanding—Alleviation, James W. Lance
My note: Not helpful

On the Edge, James Mills
My note: Skimpy

Bubbles: a Self-Portrait, Beverly Sills

Future Corruption, Ed. Roger Elwood
My note: very amateurish. Didn’t finish

Combat SF, Gordon R. Dickson
My note: Didn’t even half finish

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas, Maya Angelou
No note on this, but I read every Maya Angelou book I could find, poetry and prose.

January 21 to February 7, 2007

I probably enjoyed re-reading these two books as much as I enjoyed reading the 13 from 1977.

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen