Allusionary
Two recent novels have allusions to Jane Austen that we thought were interesting enough to bring to our readers’ attention.
In the book The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow, excerpted at USAToday.com, the narrator is a book, and the premise indicates that books are sentient beings; interesting enough, and check this out:
The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic. A bit of literary history may clarify matters. Unlike Charles Dickens’s other novels, Little Dorrit was in fact written by The Færie Queene. It is fortunate that Jane Austen’s reputation does not rest on Northanger Abbey, for the author of that admirable satire was Paradise Regained in a frivolous mood. The twentieth century offers abundant examples, from The Pilgrim’s Progress cranking out Atlas Shrugged, to Les Misérables composing The Jungle, to The Memoirs of Casanova penning Portnoy’s Complaint.
We really are not sure what to make of that.
Alert Janeite Diane wrote to tell us that Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s latest novel, A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity, begins with a quotation from Jane Austen (but we don’t know which one) and the title, of course, is taken from Emma:
Mrs. Bates, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille. She lived with her single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward circumstances, can excite. Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married.
More information about the book, and an excerpt from the first chapter, is available at Ms. Seidel’s Web site.
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