For a book club I am in, I began Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Story of Staggering Genius". I didn't know anything about Eggers but I thought he was a humorist. I started the book but after 20% of it, I decided I didn't want to read further. I am surprised since my daughter told me years ago that she gives a book 50 pages before she decides she doesn't want to read more of it. It turns out that 20% is 48 pages.
Then, the other night, we looked through movies supplied with our Amazon Prime membership and I saw the title "Miss Austen Regrets". Years ago, I heard the Cole Porter song "Miss Otis Regrets", which was sung in a way that intrigued me. I keep running into Miss Austen, that is Jane, the well-known author of "Pride and Prejudice" and other novels. I knew my wife had read some of the Austen novels but I haven't. The movie "Miss Austen Regrets" reminded me of my increasing interest in this Jane Austen (1775-1817), who keeps popping up. I saw the movie "The Jane Austen Book Club" and quite a while ago, I watched the movie "Pride and Prejudice", starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
I contacted my friend, an retired professor of English, in a state of some exasperation, since I started reading Austen's "Mansfield Park" to Lynn and we both had trouble understanding the language. It is written in English but by my standards, twisted and opaque wording. My friend advised me to switch to "Persuasion" or some other Austen book. She told me that I would soon get used to the language.
She was right. I read the first two chapters of Persuasion aloud and we both felt we knew what was going on and enjoyed being part of it. We met the heroine Anne's father and we learned that he and others in the story place a great deal of emphasis on the social rank of the people they socialize with and pay attention to. I suspect that if I were part of the social group in that time, I might be that way, too. I am a red-blooded, two-fisted, hard-driving American but in that time and place, I might feel that I only mattered in any important way if I had a title, like "baron". I just looked up "baron" since I don't know much about nobility ranks and such. I accidentally put in two r's and found a member of the President's family. Of course, in that time and place, tradition and the economy and rules and regulations and customs and such might offer very few ways of standing out, looking good, and mattering.
