Great Russian Authors, 20th Century

One of my earliest blog entries was a list of my favorite Russian authors from the 19th Century, called Great Russian Authors.  I have been surprised to see that this list has consistently been one of my top viewed posts, and the only one from my first year of blogging that maintains any attention.  Thus, there seems to be a fair amount of interest from the book blogging community and others to learn more about Russian Literature.  Because I am such a big fan, I am eager to share it with anyone who is intrigued by it as well.  So now I would like to follow up and offer you a list of the great Russian authors from the 20th Century:

1. Mikhail Bulgakov (1891 - 1940)
Early in his career life, Bulgakov discovered his great passion and affinity for writing.  He quickly abandoned his other pursuits and took on some high profile positions as a critic and a playwright.  However, he generated a lot of backlash for his writing, and many of his works were censored and banned. His freedom was increasingly restricted, and in frustration he wrote his brilliant, biting satire, The Master and Marguerita, in the last years of his life.  Yet because of its daring content, it wasn't published until 26 years after his death.

2. Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008)
Perhaps the embodiment of 20th Century Russian literature, Solzhenitsyn revealed to the world the corrupt and violent nature of Soviet Russia.  In 1945, he was sent to a Siberian labor camp for writing derogatory comments about Stalin in a letter.  The 8 years he was imprisoned had a profound impact on his life and writing.  One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich spread through the West like wildfire, but it was just the beginning.  In addition to many fictional pieces, he wrote countless articles and essays that have carried an immense impact on intellectual society.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1970, but he was exiled and stripped of his Russian citizenship until 1990.

3. Anna Akhmatova (1889 - 1966)
One of the few prominent female authors in her generation, Akhmatova is most renowned for her poetry.  It is said that the women in Russia showered her with support and admiration, and the men were likewise complimentary.  Yet after a period of notoriety, her work was banned and denounced in the 1920s.  Although she escaped arrest, many of her friends were exiled and sent to labor camps.  Her ex-husband was executed and her son was imprisoned.  Nevertheless, she refused to leave her home country and continued writing poetry.  As the years continued, the themes of her poems evolved from romance and beauty to suffering and lamentation.

4. Boris Pasternak (1890 - 1960)
Leo Tolstoy was actually a close friend of the Pasternak family, and his influence is embedded throughout Boris's life and writing.  However, Pasternak's style is entirely his own; his perspective on the Bolshevik Revolution is brilliant, cutting, and totally unique.  Despite great risk and suffering, Pasternak refused to leave Russia during the tumult.  His name was added and removed from execution lists during the Great Purge.  When Pasternak published Dr. Zhivago in 1956, he knew he was taking an enormous risk.  When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958, angry threats and demonstrations broke out in the Soviet Union.  Because he would be refused re-entry if he left, he had to decline the acceptance of the award in Stockholm.

5. Vladimir Nabokov (1899 - 1977)
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Nabokov was born into great wealth and privilege.  However, his family had to flee Russia and his father was ultimately murdered in 1922, a tragedy that irrevocably shook his life and later writing. Most of his early work was poetry, and he moved to the USA to work as a college professor in 1940.  It was during his years in the US that he wrote Lolita, his most famous and enduring piece of work.  With its success, he moved back to Europe and devoted himself to writing, though he was never able to surpass its literary acclaim.

6. Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
This may surprise you, but I want to add Rand to this list.  She was born and raised in Russia, though she eventually became an American citizen and did all of her writing in the United States.  She is a fabulously brilliant and inventive author, and her work was dedicated to philosophical reasoning and satire.  Her first novel, We the Living, is the only one set in Russia with an overt message about her native land.  However, her devotion to individualism, capitalism, and rationalism were undoubtedly affected by her years in the restrictive Soviet state.  The Fountainhead is my current favorite of her works, but I still have much more to read.

7. Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)
Yet another Nobel Prize winner, Brodsky is most known for his poetry and essays.  It kind of amazes me how many of these Russian authors were awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature during such a prohibitive regime.  During his time in Russia, Brodsky was interrogated, thrown into mental institutions, arrested, sent to labor camp, and ultimately exiled.  Today he is one of the most celebrated Russian poets, and he was mentored by Akhmatova.  One poem I recommend was written in English near the end of his life, called "Bosnia Tune."

Though I truly believe that the 19th Century was the Golden Age of Russian Literature, the authors I have listed are also brilliant and extremely praiseworthy.  It is important to note that many of these writers produced their work in a time of strict censorship and at the risk of severe punishment.  They are also highly influenced by the Russian authors who preceded them, and they frequently allude to 19th century literature in their work.

If you are aware of another 20th century Russian author whom you believe deserves to be included in this list, please let me know in the comments!  I would be thrilled to learn of another author and happy to give you credit for the suggestion.

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton has yet to disappoint me!  I loved Ethan Frome, a beautiful tragedy about snowy New England that made quite an impression on me.  So I was eager to read a full-length novel by Wharton, since Ethan Frome is really more of a novella.  The Age of Innocence is rich with layers of relationships, social critique, and class divisions, as well as an abundance of character development.

The protagonist of the story is Newland Archer, who lives on the Upper East Side of New York City in the late 1800s.  At the beginning of the novel, he is the embodiment of upper class society, making all of his life decisions to reflect the image of a beautiful, successful man.  He has proposed to May Welland, often described as being the "Helen of Troy" in the room with her magnetic beauty.  He is employed as a lawyer, though he exerts minimal effort in his position, as is proper in his circumstances.  He is fluent in all the hidden codes and meanings within his society and has perfected them.  Naturally, the plot must thicken, and so he falls in love with a woman who is deemed socially inappropriate in his society.

In all honesty, if I were reading this plot summary, I would crinkle my nose and avoid the book.  I mean, we've heard this story line a thousand times, haven't we?  Star-crossed lovers from different social classes fall in love despite the disapproval of their families.  Hell, that's even the plot of Titanic.  However, Wharton brilliantly undercuts her novel with a subtle but throbbing critique.  She uses her language brilliantly, with descriptions both humorous and tragic.  Without stating it directly, she shows us the foolishness of their chatter, their clothing, their events, and their lives.  Eventually, Newland's eyes are opened to the inane hypocrisy that we have been able to see all along, but he cannot escape it.

While immersing themselves in Wharton's New York City, readers might be inclined to wonder about the frivolity in their own lives.  How do we spend our time?  How do we spend our money?  What do we worry about?  Why do we worry so much?  I did not like this novel because I was captivated by the romantic relationship.  In fact, their relationship is erratic at best, with few swells of joy and connection.  Instead, I liked the social commentary and rich descriptions.  I enjoyed watching each of the characters change, because several of them did experience drastic transitions in their attitudes, actions, and self-awareness. And the ending had all of the ambiguity of a good Henry James novel.  Left in a climax of emotion, I stared at the book in my hands, willing it to give me a few more pages, with a sound of dismay escaping my lips.  Yet for this reason, I couldn't imagine a better ending.

I always do a bit of research before I write about the books I've read, so I have only just discovered that Edith Wharton earned a Pulitzer Prize for this novel.  Moreover, this was the first time a woman had ever won a Pulitzer.  I can't help but pause and appreciate this accomplishment, as well as the example she set for future female authors.  This novel has all the wit and gossip of a Jane Austen novel, and yet it is stuffed with an undercurrent of irony and embedded social critique.  I'm sure Wharton wanted to entertain her readers with this story, but I think she had more desire to pull the wool from before their eyes.  By design, she didn't write it so that young girls could hold the romance in their hearts and dream of their own Newland Archer.  On the other hand, she makes us aware of the decisions we make in our lives that set our path in motion and affect those around us.  And she does it beautifully.

Green Hills of Africa

“Your first seeing of a country is a very valuable one.  Probably more valuable to yourself than to any one else, is the hell of it.  But you ought to always write it to try to get it stated.  No matter what you do with it.”

This is one of the many great lines in Ernest Hemingway's nonfiction account of his time in Kenya, Green Hills of Africa.  I am currently writing this to you from Nairobi, moving in on my third week in this beautiful country.  I brought this book along with me, knowing that I wanted to save it for when I could see his descriptions with my own eyes and better grasp his message.  It was the perfect setting to read this wonderful book, as it tossed in some words I'm learning in Swahili along with the descriptions of the people, animals, and landscape that I am likewise seeing.

At the beginning of the book, Hemingway says that he wrote Green Hills of Africa to see whether an "absolutely true book" could compete with a work of imagination.  We are all familiar with his many fictional masterpieces - A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, etc - but it is entirely different to read him in this book.  In between his tales of hunting buffalo and rhinoceros, he shares the conversations he had with those in his traveling company.  In many of these conversations, he discusses what makes a good writer and a bad one.  He analyzes the breakdown between a true masterpiece and the "slop" that comes from hurry and/or arrogance.  He specifically names a number of authors, many of whom were alive while he wrote, and labels their work as good or bad.  Hemingway lived in what we may consider the "Golden Age" of writers, nestled in the community of ex-patriots in Paris.  On a regular basis, he conversed with Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and many others.  For a literature lover like myself, it is a real treat to get some of this inside scoop.

I also love this book because Hemingway truly loved Africa.  Unlike many mzungu (white) writers of his generation, he really portrays each of the Africans as real people and unique individuals.  He admires some of the Africans he met greatly, awed by their tracking skills and physical capabilities.  Others annoy him to no end, to the point that he frequently dreams of punching them in the face.  This is true of people anywhere, and I love that he doesn't blanket them in one description or stereotype.  He enjoys learning Swahili until the words sound completely natural to him, as do the tribal marks and African traditions he often encounters.  He loves the suspense and adventure of hunting wildlife, and he shares his embarrassing mistakes as well as his impressive accomplishments.  He just loves Kenya:

“I loved this country and I felt at home, and where a man feels at home, outside of where he’s born, is where he’s meant to go.”

I should note that this book does not touch on the tension in Africa, nor its problems and poverty.  Hemingway's account is quite limited to his personal experience while on a long hunting journey.  But I don't mind that he focuses on the beauty and adventure, because sometimes that aspect of Kenya gets lost somewhere in translation to the West.  As a foreign mzungu, he could never grasp the complexities of this country and fairly identify them in a short novel.  So in this case, I think it is better that he didn't even attempt to do that.  Other novels, like Things Fall Apart, are much better equipped to do it.

Reading Hemingway's perspective on his time in Kenya inspires me to want to do the same thing.  Here I am, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching these wonderful sights.  Here I am, carefully observing the people and surroundings I encounter.  Here I am, witnessing the good and the bad together.  Here I am, likewise falling in love with Kenya.  I am forming my own perspective of this country, though I realize that I may not be forming an accurate one.  But it is nevertheless unfolding before me, and it will contain value for me regardless of what I am able to do with it.  This is one of those parts of my life in which real life is greater than fiction, and I want to hold on to that and make it last as long as possible.  Like Hemingway, I ought to find a way to "get it stated."

To my fellow readers, I do think you should check out this book, but I also think you should come see Kenya for yourselves.

Season of Migration to the North

I will be traveling to Kenya in a few days, which will be my first trip to Africa.  In preparation, I have been reading a lot of African literature, and Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih was particularly beautiful, and I feel compelled to share it.

Someone actually recommended this book to me a while ago, though I only recently read it.  However, I am glad that I read it when I did, for I think I was able to better appreciate it.  It is set in the Sudan, and I have been trying to learn more about this part of the world since one of my friends moved to South Sudan last year.  He frequently writes about the cultural issues he encounters in his blog, which I highly recommend.  Over the summer, the New Yorker published an excellent article about the South Sudan that I still think about at times, as it gave a very helpful history of this new country.  But perhaps more significantly, it was a good time for me to read this as I have been preparing for my own trip.  My best friend grew up in Africa and loves the continent, and I've been asking her to help me avoid being the kind of Western tourist she hates.  Season of Migration to the North centers around the relationship that Africa has with the West and is incredibly insightful.

The novel is a story within a story, set in a kind of metanarrative frame.  The narrator is an unnamed man who returns to his hometown in the Sudan after spending several years of study in England.  Then the story temporarily switches to the narration of Mustafa Sa'eed, who reluctantly (and drunkenly) shares his life story with the narrator.  Like the narrator, Mustafa excelled in his village growing up and then spent a period of his life in England.  This short encounter between the narrator and Mustafa changed the course of the narrator's life.  He recognized many things about himself within Mustafa, and this realization immediately humbled him and threw him into contemplation.

This is one of those novels that is not primarily about the plot.  I could summarize the events that occurred, but that would not be an accurate portrayal of the story.  Instead, this is about the difficulty two men experienced in trying to discern their identities as an English-educated natives of Sudan.  As boys, they were taught that English was their key to success and the future.  If they were intelligent, they needed to leave Africa in order to "better themselves" and thus become more Anglicized.  Their fellow citizens would praise their efforts and celebrate their success, but was it a lie?  This is the question with which the narrator must grapple.  He writes:

"Over there is like here, neither better nor worse.  But I am from here, just as the date palm standing in the courtyard has grown in our house and not in anyone else's.  The fact that they came into our land, I know not why, does that mean that we should poison our present and our future?"

It is important to note that Salih does not unequivocally praise Africa and curse the West.  Rather, he highlights a number of unpleasant aspects of the Sudanese culture and shows some of its tragedy, and this blends with the challenges of post-colonialism.  There is a balance between the problems in both lands, as well as the difficulty these two men faced in trying to live between two worlds.  Mustafa often seems to be almost sociopathic in his lack of emotions, but there also seems to be a sensitivity in his self-analysis.  The narrator tries to resist the problems of the people around him, but he cannot disentangle himself from them.  As a reader, I felt increasing emotional distance from the story and its characters until a few shocking moments would instantly draw me back in.  The ending is the perfect example of this building numbness that switches to a cry of emotion, and I felt this ebb and flow throughout the entire story.

In many ways, I felt that this was actually a book of poetry.  Not only are the two main characters poets, but the language itself is beautifully written.  I could pull out quote after quote that can stand on its own merits, without the surrounding text.  There are countless beautiful passages of description that don't technically add to the plot but build upon the force of the narrative.  I am already compelled to re-read these passages to make sure that they stick with me and do not fade away.

Finally, I want to remind myself of these lessons on a personally applicable level.  I want to conscientiously enter Africa with the perspective that it is its own entity rather than a comparison of what I know in the West.  I want to avoid my tourist eyes and switch to a thoughtful observer.  I want to let Africa show me its culture without me imposing my own on it.  Is this possible?  Perhaps not.  Perhaps it would be a lie for me to assume such observational ability for a short trip.  However, I feel it is my duty to do this as best as I can and to at least be consciously aware of its healthy/unhealthy entanglement with the West.

RIP Chinua Achebe

Two days ago, an amazing writer of our generation died: Chinua Achebe.  Strangely enough, I first heard his name as I was reading an Art History textbook.  The authors were discussing African art and culture, and they listed Achebe as an immovable fixture in the 20th and 21st century culture.  It is not often that literature is mentioned in these art textbooks, and this struck me on two levels: 1. This author must be incredibly important and talented to be referenced; and 2. Why had I never heard of him before??

I quickly corrected this and picked up a copy of Things Fall Apart, which is often referred to as one of Africa's greatest novels.  I remember reading it with interest, but I found the ending to be so profound that it thundered through me.  I couldn't move for a few moments as I considered his final words and looked through my own heart.  Somehow, Achebe managed to challenge his readers and moralize them without lecturing or condemning them.  He spoke from his heart as an African, but it is important not to limit his eulogy in those terms.  From what I understand, he was torn in his sense of identity, and I believe you can feel that in his writing.  He recognized the beauty and the darkness in his life and his world, and he did not strive to reveal one more than the other.  But his talent was so evident in his writing that he put African literature on an international stage, just as Gabriel Garcia Marquez did for the Latin Americans and Tolstoy did for the Russians.  I do believe Achebe will be immortalized in Classic Literature, and righty so.  Thus, I wanted to take a moment today to honor this great author, one who lived and wrote during my lifetime, and whose works I greatly enjoy and will treasure.

The New Yorker published a wonderful article about Achebe, which you can read here.

You can also read my full review of Things Fall Apart in an earlier blog entry.

Life of Pi

I've been torn about whether or not to promote this book ever since I first read it, and the current movie version has now pushed me over the edge.  I originally thought I might add this to my "Contemporary Lit" series since it was published in 2001.  However, I've been wrestling with whether it really contains the depth I require in order to assert that a book ought to have "Classic Literature" status.  Yes, I realize that I am being too hard on myself and my guidelines.  If I like a book, I should just write about it, shouldn't I?

Well, no.  If I want to be true to my original intention for this blog, it was to advocate for great literature.  The literature I have written about is the literature which has most shaped me, moved me, challenged me, and impacted me.  I have read every page of these books, and I believe they are largely responsible for forming who I am.  Some of them were a struggle and others were a breeze; all of them were intensely satisfying.  I write about these books because I want you to read them too.  I want you to grow in your desire to invest in truly great literature and not just the flippantly entertaining pieces.

Now here I am, writing about Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  If it weren't for the last few pages, I don't think I would be doing this.  The entire novel is an enjoyable read, and I don't want to negate the value of reading simply for pleasure.  I'm not quite so pretentious that I scorn such books or never indulge in them myself.  Yet in order for me to write about it on my blog, I needed it to be more.  And the twist at the end made me realize that it really was.

I don't think I can talk about this without slipping some spoilers, so *please stop reading* if you don't want to ruin something for yourself.  I usually avoid spoilers, but this ending is so critical for understanding the depth of the story that I cannot neglect it in my discussion.  For the majority of the novel, we are taken on a journey of magical realism and fantasy, as a young boy is stranded at sea with wild animals from his family's zoo.  In particular, we read about Richard Parker, the regal Bengal tiger which Ang Lee's movie amazingly brings to life.*  We learn that Richard Parker is neither tame nor vicious, and Pi spends months trying to connect with this animal passenger who unexpectedly joined him.  Yet most of all, this story is about survival against enormous odds as Pi and Richard Parker float in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days.

In the final chapters, two Japanese colleagues visit Pi in the hospital in order to investigate the cause of the shipwreck.  They listen to Pi's story and submit a report to the Maritime Department.  After telling them all about Richard Parker and the story we just read, Pi eventually gives them a second story, which has a number of obvious parallels.  This second story is far more tragic than the first; it's heart-wrenching and gory and shocking.  It changes everything.  Suddenly, the whole story takes on new meaning and interpretation, and it's tempting to immediately re-read the book in order to fully appreciate that.

I think that my favorite thing about this novel is that it illustrates the power of story.  I have long believed that there is a power in narrative and fiction, and that it can teach us things we wouldn't truly be able to understand otherwise.  It opens doors to our hearts and minds and allows us to access feelings and messages that we need to receive.  Martel beautifully reveals this with a compelling force of imagination and deeper meaning.

So at first, I felt that this was an adventure story but not necessarily a truly great work.  But I am challenged by Pi's words at the end:

"I know what you want. You want a story that won't surprise you. That will confirm what you already know. That won't make you see higher or further or differently. You want a flat story. An immobile story. You want dry, yeastless factuality."

Perhaps that is what I wanted, and perhaps I nearly missed the greater story.  Perhaps my stubborn attachment to Classic Literature is inadvertently blocking me from some wonderfully imaginative pieces.  And you know what?  Life of Pi is a marvelous novel, fully deserving of its acclaim.

*Ang Lee's recent movie is a true masterpiece of cinematography.  Moreover, it is extremely faithful to the book and an excellent representation of the original novel.  I definitely recommend it!

Guest Blog: Jane Austen Overview

Thus far, I've only had one guest blogger on my site, but I want to bring this back and share some new perspectives.  So now I will turn it over to my good friend, Abigail Solberg...

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a wealthy man must be in want of a wife.”

Ah, the sentence that almost everyone who has ever visited a library or cracked open a book has heard once before.  I mean, honestly, I didn’t even have to look at the book to make sure I got it accurately.  As you can probably already deduce, this is not Amy writing. There will be too few intelligent words and many more (failed?) attempts at wittiness than what you've grown to know and love about Amy's blog. Sorry, hate to disappoint, but I'm not Amy. I didn't graduate after studying in the Oxford library, just a few dark-wood-tables-and-massive-aisles-with-ladders-and-books away from Anna Popplewell.

This is Abi, and this is what I believe to be one of Amy’s first guest blog posts! If you like what you read, you can try to follow me on my blog, The Abi Complex, but seeing as I haven't written in as many months as Paula Deen denied having T2 Diabetes, it might be a waste of time to sign up. But feel free to check it out!

As for how Amy and I know each other, that is a story that dates back nearly 6 years! It all started in the summer of ’07 when I got an e-mail while I was in Romania from some Indiana girl claiming to be my freshman roommate. She told me that her colors for her side of the room were blue and brown, AND (since picking the colors of your room seemed to me to be the most important part of preparing for college), I safely assumed that I would not like her.

What I learned within the first month of school was that me and my pink comforter would find her to be one of my closest friends through all four years. We would watch football together, talk about classes and guys, debate over movie choices, drink coffee AND talk about literature. I found Amy to be one of the only people who could excite me about reading a book! The passion that would fly across her face as she swore to me that I would love some book made me so excited to read it. We started a tradition, where every holiday we would give each other a new book to read that we had already read and loved.

Thanks to Amy, I have been exposed to The Bell Jar, The Four Feathers, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Moby Dick, and more.

Unfortunately for her, my selections have been on the girly side. Because I knew that she liked Uncle Tom's Cabin, I thought for some reason that the perfect first book to give her would be Mansfield Park by Jane Austen… because the movie version (which I'd seen more recently than reading the book) included a side story about the father mistreating his African slaves. Unfortunately, that is not in the book, and was probably the WORST book to give her to introduce her to Jane Austen.

Epic. Fail.

This is the one author that Amy and I have constantly disagreed on: “Jane Austin never writes about anything important. It’s just a bunch of lazy conversations that don’t amount to much of anything.” This is not a direct quote from her, but it is the reader’s digest version of our many conversations on the topic. So, because I will most likely not be able to post about this author again on her site, I will comment on Austen’s work as a whole, rather than one specific book - trying to spit out everything that I can before Amy catches on and kicks me out!

So let’s leave that lengthy introduction and get to the best part: Jane Austen.

Let’s think about this for a moment. What other author has had all of his or her works turned into movies, has had a film made about her life AND a film about a book club based on reading her works?! There is just no way that anyone can deny the impact she has had on the world.

I firmly believe that any woman who meets the following qualifications will benefit/enjoy reading one or all of Austen’s novels:

1. If you think you would like the Bronte sisters’ books better if they were just a touch happier.

2. If you enjoy talking with your girlfriends for hours about minute details of someone else's relationship status as well as your own and those you read in the magazines.

3. If you are a sucker for everyone in a novel getting exactly what they deserve (which for the heroine, always means the love of her life).

I will in no way deny Austen’s running theme in her stories. Nor will I try to argue that these are good novels based on a plot with an ending that can’t be deduced after the first chapter or copious amounts of action! What I will say is, you know that Austen’s novels are good because most women can read them and feel entirely engrossed even without these aspects.

I think there are 3 main things that reading an Austen novel offers:

1. It illuminates one’s character and shows how it really looks in the light of day.

Example 1: Persuasion - The character who pretends to be her friend, but advises her against an imprudent match.

Example 2: Pride & Prejudice - Momma Bennett, oh hell, the entire Bennett family - other than Jane and Elizabeth, of course.

Example 3: Emma - Unfortunately, Emma. Though you love her anyway, because you can see where her heart is… or you just see her as a pet that you can pity and love and secretly want to be - but not exactly respect.

2. It offers relief from an unfair world ruled not by right, wrong and karma, but by shades of gray, people you know, and frustrating circumstances.

Example 1: Mansfield Park - The brother and sister, who end up in relationships as shallow as the puddle on the floor of my bathroom when I step out from the shower.

Example 2: Persuasion - Captain Wentworth, of course.

Example 3: Pride & Prejudice - Lydia Bennet marrying a whore. Need I say more?

3. It’s a chatty kathy’s heaven - Tons of gossip rolled up into one nicely bound or Kindled copy.

Example 1: Sense & Sensibility – Mrs. Jennings

Example 2: Emma - That’s a hot bed of information

Example 3: Northanger Abbey - Probably the least accurate gossip of all of them

Now the degree to which I like Austen is somewhat inexplicable, but let me end this post with some opinions by other writers you may admire and see if they can sway your opinion! These all come from a book titled A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen. (See! You know she has to be great if there are books out there trying to explain why!)

Harold Bloom: “We read Austen because she seems to know us better than we know ourselves, and she seems to know us so intimately for the simple reason that she helped determine who we are both as readers and as human beings.”

James Collins: "Her ironies swirl and drop like the cast of a fly fisherman. This rhythmic motion seems to me ideal for both accepting and rejecting the ways of the wretched world while maintaining balance."

Amy Bloom: “Jane Austen is, for me, the best writer for anyone who believes in love more than in romance, and who cares more for the private than the public. She understands that men and women have to grow up in order to deserve and achieve great love, that some suffering is necessary (that mewling about it in your memoir or on a talk show will not help at all), and that people who mistake the desirable object for the one necessary and essential love will get what they deserve.”

And probably my favorite, Benjamin Nugent, writer of American Nerd: The Story of My People: “Young nerds should read Austen because she’ll force them to hear dissonant notes in their own speech they might otherwise miss, and open their eyes to defeats and victories they otherwise wouldn’t even have noticed. Like almost all worthwhile adolescent experience, it can be depressing, but it can also feel like waking up.”

Now, I hope that I have done enough justice to this author in as short a blog post as possible, as there will most likely not be another chance. AND now, all you readers, please comment and further beg Amy to read through at least 3 more Austen novels before making up her mind!!!