Gentle readers, strap on your seat belts. Tony Grant from London Calling sent in his review of “A Jane Austen Education: How six novels taught me about love, friendship and the things that really matter“by William Deresiewicz. Let’s just say this is a review by a bloke about a bloke’s book. There will be no teacup or regency fan ratings this time.
Just recently a dear friend sent me a copy of A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz. I had read some of the reviews written on a few of the Jane blogs and my impression from those was that it must be a fresh, slightly different approach to engaging with Jane’s works. I sort of put the idea of reading it to one side, I must admit. I thought it would be just another quirky angle on Jane. Anything with Jane’s name attached to it sells, doesn’t it? However, now having a copy here in front of me I decided, at the very least, I should have a look, delve in, and see what I thought.
The front cover was at first a mystery and slightly off putting. A paper doll cut out suited gentleman, headless, to be placed over an inanimate cardboard cut out of a Regency, or did it look more early Victorian, gentleman, presumably wearing underwear, seemed an odd choice. One dimensional, stiff, inanimate, stuck in one pose, drinking tea, ah yes, there was the Jane connection. What did all this reveal about what I was about to discover between the sheets?
The contents page revealed a nice straightforward approach. Chapter 1 Emma, Every Day Matters, Chapter 2 Pride and Prejudice, Growing Up and so on through the six published novels, each providing William with a stepping stone along his journey of self discovery and growth. And to round it all off, a nice concluding chapter “The End of the story.” Yes, a well-ordered and neatly constructed narrative was bound to follow.
By the end of the first chapter I had our William sussed. Start with the personal stuff (my life was crap-type thing) – provide an overview of the novel, characters, and plot, and then follow through by laboriously comparing his life events with the characters and events in the book. And finally, relating how it had changed him for the best. I began to feel that I was about to hunker down for a tortuous time. But things were worse than that, William was depressed. Now I’m fine with depression and especially manic depression. All the great comedians profess to be depressives. We have had and have (some of them are dead by the way) Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and John Clease. All of them are professed manic depressives who used this depth of pain to create some of the greatest humour ever. Winston Churchill suffered from what he termed his ”black dog.” Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, both incredible writers who could bare their souls and take us to places in the human psyche we would never have dreamed of, both took their lives. Life was too unbearable.
However William writes,
Well it just sat there, that realisation, like a lump in my gut – sat there for weeks. I didn’t know what to do with it, how to get rid of it, how to dig myself out the hole I just discovered I was in. But I knew I couldn’t live like that anymore.”
This passage is a build up to telling his girlfriend at the time, that he thought they should part their ways. There was no depth to their relationship apparently. This level of depression is the equivalent of having a bad cold. In the hierarchy of depressive situations, William is not going to reach into our emotional depths and inspire us with what is a very common place situation. I was hoping things would get better, but no, he droned on in this flat slightly miserable way all through the first chapter. And what did he learn from Emma?
“Even I was beginning to realise what a real relationship looked like,” he droned.
Oh I see!!!!!!! Yes, I was really beginning to see.
I was getting the idea. I really do hope William gets his full share of the kudos that Jane’s name, applied to a title, provides. I was beginning to think, what else is there? What other value?
At one stage, I must say, I thought that the analysis part of each chapter had worth, William is an English literature lecturer at a university after all, but then I got bored with that too. He is far, far too contrived. Later in the book, here is William analysing Mansfield Park, my favourite Austen novel,
“What Austen recommended to us, she urged upon her nearest and dearest, too. Love means effort and self control – for the sake of others, and thus, ultimately, for your own.”
Oh God, this is beginning to sound so profound. Life’s hard lessons learned so emphatically, and by a writer so young too.
I squirmed a few times while reading this. Yes, I did persevere. The book was compelling in a ”how can it get worse?” sort of way.
But this is the real sneaky bit. Come on William, tell us the truth. What were you thinking when you wrote this stuff ?
We had jumped each other one night the previous summer, and though we had been together for over a year we had little in common and had never much progressed beyond the sex.”
Honesty, the baring of ones soul, telling it like it is — it’s all in this book. William repeats at discrete, well-paced intervals, lightly (and apparently carelessly), how bad he feels about superficial relationships and jumping into bed for hot steamy one night stands. Any bloke down my pub would laugh at him heartily and call him a …….!!! No I really can’t write what I know my mates would say. William might sue me. This book just ain’t for blokes, let’s put it that way.
It does beg the question who this little boy lost saga is for.
By the end of the book William tells us he has found true, deep, long-lasting love. He has found out at last what it means to be “intimate.” One of the most squirm-creating moments in this whole squirm-creating edifice was earlier in the book when William asks a girlfriend in a cafe what intimacy was and if they were being intimate at that time.
The book ends: (Warning: Spoiler alert.)
That first weekend she came to Brooklyn, the visit that sealed our fate, she brought along a book, just in case there was some downtime. [I’m trying to imagine what the downtime might entail and why and how there could be downtime.] She knew I was a graduate student by that point, but she had no idea what I studied or whom I was writing my dissertation about. It was just the thing she happened to be reading at the time.
The book was Pride and Prejudice.
Reader, I married her.”
So let me get this right. In the end, after all the soul searching, all those profound life lessons it boiled down to Pride and Prejudice?
We’ve been taken through the superficial relationships and I must admit, when I got to the end of the book, I discovered William’s photograph on the back of the fly sheet. It startled me. This bloke had superficial relationships!!!!! There has been the father who disapproved. There has been the depressive moments, mild depression by the way, boring and ordinary, that nothing but a good blow of the nose into a handkerchief wouldn’t have solved. There have been the life lessons learned. I’m sorry, I can’t get it out of my head: This young bloke has learned life’s lessons through Jane Austen already. Where does he go from there? My experience is nothing like that. Life creeps up on you imperceptibly. You adapt and grow slowly, often without noticing and sometimes you regress badly. Life and life’s lessons are nowhere near as easy to learn, as William makes out, by reading a set of novels. You can’t learn it in your head, you have to live life. Sometimes I think it’s impossibly to learn the so-called life lessons. Often we are just stuck, through no fault of our own, because we are who we are.
I am very reluctant to throw a book onto a fire, for echoes of the many evil political regimes that have done that sort of thing come to mind. What I’ll do, out of gratitude to my friend who sent me this copy, is put it on my bookshelf to gather dust. Then I’ll forget about it.
Jane Austen's World 
Ah, so definitely NOT one to add to one’s present list. Looks like life’s too short to waste time reading it: sounds like it should have been on writing it, too. Thanks for alerting us …
Tony, you put it on your bookshelf to gather dust? This sounds more like one to be donated to the thrift store. Sounds like one my husband wouldn’t even bother to finish had he started it; he says “I don’t have time to read bad books.” Has Vic read it? I’d like to get her take on it as well.
Well done Tony! – do I dare admit to being the giver of the book?! [in thanks for you trekking me around London for a day in May!] – I was hoping for a sharp-tongued “bloke’s” review and you did not disappoint!
I did enjoy this book, despite his often annoying self-depreciating commentary -[he was indeed in desperate need of help!] – he does have some great insight into the novels, and this is certainly a novel approach for a scholar to lay bare such a personal response to an author’s work rather than the usual distant objective academic stance – for this alone I think the book is worth reading and having in your Austen collection. He does put into better words than I on how Austen’s works are so effective in making us see ourselves and our neighbors in such a clear light.
I just agree with you that life’s lessons take a life-time to learn and re-learn – and Austen is required re-reading to help us along the way! So Tony, let the dust gather on this book, but not your Austen! – I think that Deresiewicz should do a re-visit-re-write in about 30 years, don’t you think?
Thanks Tony for your very honest review!
Deb
“He does put into better words than I on how Austen’s works are so effective in making us see ourselves and our neighbors in such a clear light.”
When I read the first chapter, based on Emma, I did think that Deresiewicz, was intuitive in the way the plot, characters, action, or lack of it, being dull and boring suddenly make him realise that Austen was really showing him his own dull and boring existence and overbearing attitude towards others. As he says, he was Emma.I think that was the best bit of analysis in the whole book because it was surprising and different. As the chapters went by I thought it all became too contrived and it became boring.His approach was predictable.
Well, we have a group who says “when I want more Austen, I read more Austen”. I made a mistake a few years back buying the first sequel books that appeared published, and I promised myself “never again”. It has proved to be right, specially these last years. Anything Austen sells… not to me, definitely.
Thanks for your honesty, Tony, and congratulations for your fine work.
Great review, Tony. I totally agree with you.
The book is really a hybrid, one part analysis and one part confession.
What the author has to say about Austen and the books is fine as it is but not especially original. Unfortunately, the author’s confession of a wasted life with dreadful friends is depressing and really just a gimmick to make the book seem more than an unoriginal analysis of Austen’s book.
The comment by Hablandodejane has it exactly right: When I want more Austen, I read more Austen.
I will be the dissonant voice in the crowd and say that I enjoyed the book. I liked going on his journey with him. I gained from his perspectives on the books. I absolutely loved the ending. But, I’m disagreeing respectfully, Tony. I appreciate what you write.
Karen, I respect your viewpoint too. I expect mine is a particularly male point of view using the evidence in my way.Thank you for commenting. It’s always great to hear from you.
I must weigh in. I haven’t read the book, but now I am morbidly curious to read it. Keeping Tony’s comments in mind and some of the other glowing reviews I’ve read, I think I will find its contents more interesting than ever. Thank you, Tony, for contributing your raw and honest thoughts.
Put it on your bookshelves to gather dust? Maybe you should give it away to others who might like it. Or Vic if she doesn’t own it already.
Jane Austen V Charlotte Bronte
I have just returned to this post and noticed, I didn’t see it before, a recorded interview with William Dersiewicz that Vic has attached to the bottom of my article. He discusses various points in the book but the thing that struck me most was his almost dismissiveness of Cahrlotte Bronte which I think is misplaced and rather sad.
So Iwent back to the book to look at what William had written.
“In graduate school we split into two groups, Jane Austen pro or con……….”
I t almost sounds like William and his co students were encouraged to split into two groups. So they split into the Jane Austen group and the Charlotte Bronte group. This is a very damaging and limiting thing to do. We have to be very careful with our methods of classification because they lead to the way we think. They can narrow rather than broaden our thinking. They pigeon hole us.
William goes on to explain:
“In Pride and Prejudice reason triumphs over feeling and will. In Jayne Eyre, Charlotte Bronte’s own typically Romantic coming of age story, emotion and ego overcome all obstacles. Those of us who chose Pride and Prejudice couldn’t imagine how you could stand to read anything as immature and overwrought as Jane Eyre. Those who chose Jane Eyre couldn’t believe that you would subject your students to something as stuffy and insipid as Pride and Prejudice. Our choices, of course reflected our personalities. The Bronte people, we Austenites felt, tended to go in for self-dramatization and ideological extremism. We regarded ourselves as cooler, more dramatic bunch.”
The two novels are very different things. Bronte wrote in an area north of Manchester in the Pennines. It is a wild desolate place. Howarth buildings are made of hard millstone grit. Just behind the parsonage where she lived the wild moors reach up to the sky. It is colder than the south of England, especially in the winter. Where Bronte lived is prone to storms and far more dramatic weather conditions. Weather conditions and landscapes do affect the emotions, the way we think and our life styles. It was also an area where the Industrial Revolution was taking hold. Men and women lived much harsher lives in factories and down mines and farmers contended with much much harsher conditions than farmers in the fields of Hampshire. All this needs to be taken into account when reading Bronte.
Also Charlotte Bronte dealt with a moral dilemma. Mr Rochester was married when he professed his love for Jane Eyre. This was far more extreme than anything Jane Austen tried to deal with. So many themes are different from Jane Austen’s themes.
I feel strongly about this. It is not that simple to compare the two, Austen and Bronte.William Deresiewicz has been lead astray as a student. Encouraged to take sides without considering the circumstances. That is so narrowing.
I love the Bronte novels and the Austen novels. You just have to tune in to the differences,know where they are both coming from. Unfortunately Charlotte Bronte was dismissive of Jane Austen to some extent and maybe that has encouraged people to take sides. But I think we should be more open-minded.
Thanks, Tony, for your viewpoint. I am definitely a Janeite who was offended when I read of Bronte’s view of Jane Austen. I’m sure that has prejudiced me. I also have the experience of watching Bronte’s Jane Eyre on film and have never been drawn to the stories, before choosing sides. I appreciated your viewpoint as something to consider.
Tony, I have always loved both authors. In high school and college you could not get me to choose between Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice. Both novels spoke to me for different reasons.
I was not aware of Bronte or Austen camps until I began my blog. It is interesting that an English professor would choose to talk this way.
I must add that your comments gave me insight. Of course the harsh moors with all that sky and wind would make a difference in outlook and philosophy. And the Industrial Revolution affected that area of England in a radically different way from Jane Austen’s cozier neck of the woods. Thank you for pointing this out.
What are the reviewer’s thoughts on the author’s other book entitled Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets? Thank you.