Jul 14, 2007
I think we’d all agree that Jane Austen is the godmother of the modern romance novel. Her books have never gone out of print. Not everybody has been a fan, though—I thought I’d quote some heresy to raise your hackles and heat you up!
Joseph Conrad writing to H.G. Wells: “What is all this about Jane Austen? What is there in her? What is it all about?”
Charlotte Bronte: “Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outré or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood … What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death–this Miss Austen ignores….Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless woman), if this is heresy–I cannot help it.”
And Mark Twain REALLY didn’t like her: “Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book.”
“To me his prose is unreadable–like Jane Austin’s [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.”
“I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
Yikes.
What’s your favorite Austen novel? Movie adaptation? Quote?
I’m partial to Emma (both book and movie with Gwyneth Paltrow, although the Kate Beckinsale version is good, too).And Bride and Prejudice, the Bollywood extravaganza, is a hoot. The movie Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway (!) is due out in August. Any casting comments?
Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort and to have done with all the rest. Words to live by!
How do you feel about modern authors “continuing” Pride and Prejudice with little Darcys, et al, or with Jane being a super-sleuth? I try to avoid most of those, although I recently read Austenland by Shannon Hale, which is a charming if slight novel about a Darcy-obsessed thirty-something who gets to live out her fantasy in a faux Austentonian resort, corset and all.
Or… do you think Twain is right to dis Jane?
Jul 13, 2007
No, there are not tremors in the romance universe. Everything is probably hunky-dory in Dallas. It’s just me, warring with myself about finally filling out the application and writing the damn check to the Romance Writers of America. Why has it taken me so long (almost four years) to do what’s indubitably good for me? Why, when every published author states how useful RWA membership is, have I consistently ignored good advice and gone my own independent and doomed way? It’s definitely time for a change. I’m done with self-sabotage (and hope this blog doesn’t contribute to it further!).
I’m joining. Maybe not the local Maine chapter, which is a couple of hours away, but I should join that too. Looks like they have lunch and then workshops every third Saturday of the month. I mean, what do I usually do Saturdays? Oh, write. Right.
Now I can take courses, enter contests and get useful feedback. I have discovered I am a writer who (mostly) loves to write books but not query letters or synopses. That needs to change too, and will. I’ve got three and two-thirds books done, and a few novellas that are just waiting to be Restylaned into nice, plump novels. I had a hell of a lot of fun writing them. Maybe they’ll never get published. Time is not on my side. But…
I tend not to have regrets about mistakes, though, because I wouldn’t be me without them. One hundred dollars is little enough to fork out when RWA membership might help me figure out exactly what will work for me. And maybe I can even go to San Francisco next year. If nothing else, it will give me the impetus to lose twenty pounds, buy new shoes and meet some of my online friends.
Are you an RWA member? Any perks which have worked? Are you putting off taking your medicine on something you know you really should swallow? What should you be doing RIGHT NOW?
Friday the 13th Accomplishments:
Called pharmacy four days after prescription ran out
Scheduled doctor’s appointment I was supposed to make two months ago
Drove into town, mailed student book club books back that have been in my car a month
Sent two books and a monkey (stuffed) to Juliette that I bought in April
Mailed Stephanie’s prizes three days after picking the little piece of paper with her name on it from the pile (Thanks, everybody—you are tea-riffic!) and returned overdue library book only three days late, checked out four new books, went to Wal*Mart and bought two more,drove home
Folded the laundry that’s been in the dryer for two days, did another load
Wrote and posted this blog
SENT CHECK TO RWA!!!
You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by. Mark Twain- Letter to Orion Clemens, 3/23/1878
Jul 11, 2007
Despite the large number of cookbooks on my shelves one being choosing the best survival knife from
www.knifeista.com, I’m not much inspired to cook these days. I’m just as happy to spend $2.19 on a Lean Cuisine. I’m lucky that my husband gets home before I do during the school year, so I usually walk in to a hug and a hot meal. It’s been a treat to have been on vacation the past week and have do the work for me in the kitchen. During the Avon contest, I was so obsessed I actually forgot to eat and I lost ten pounds. Bonus! When’s the next one?
Food and drink often play prominent roles in books and on screen. Say the words Tom Jones and I immediately remember the decadent eating scene. In books, couples are always hie-ing off on a picnic and coupling. Under the Tuscan Sun (the book by Frances Mayes, not the very pleasant movie) was a delicious tribute to Italy’s cuisine. Peter Mayle does an excellent job transplanting me to France, too. I’m getting hungry just thinking about them.
Writers are always encouraged to address the five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell and yum, taste. Here’s a great paragraph from Laura Lee Guhrke’s And Then He Kissed Her. The heroine is being kissed “in the half-light and shadows.”
She closed her eyes, and her other senses bloomed with a vivid clarity they had never possessed before. The masculine, earthy scent of him. The callus on his palm where his hand cupped her cheek. The taste of his mouth as he parted her lips with his. The sound of what could only be her own heart, beating like the rapid wings of a bird as it soared upward toward the heavens.
Wow.
What have you read lately that engaged all your senses? What’s your favorite cookbook? Visit http://www.cookdinnerfaster.com/ for more info. I realy on my stained standard Fanny Farmer, but do enjoy Paula Deen, too, y’all.
And speaking of food, Stephanie is going to be drooling as she reads her issues of Tea Time with her little Maine snack. E-mail me your address at maggierobinson8@yahoo.com and once I unpack, I’ll be sending the prizes right out to you!
Get your iherb voucher now!
Jun 30, 2007
But there may be a “U” in tea. July contest!The name of one lucky commenter will be drawn at random to receive two beautiful issues of Southern Lady’s Tea Time magazine, chock full of recipes and tea lore, a Maine treat and some other sweet stuff. You’ll have to supply your own cup of tea. I’ll be having mine iced on vacation, so look for a new post with the winner after July 11.
You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me. ~C.S. Lewis
I’m a tea drinker. Although I love coffee, it doesn’t seem to always agree with me (Coffee ice cream seems to be okay, though *g*.). My favorite brand is King Cole tea, which is manufactured in New Brunswick, Canada. So, sometimes foreign intrigue has been involved when I want to purchase it.
I came across this tea when I was working in another school district. The school nurse walked by, and she smelled terrific. Actually, it was her mug of tea. Her mother lived in Calais, Maine (pronounced “callous” here—sorry, Francophiles) and she went grocery shopping in Canada every time she visited. My friend CeCe knew someone who worked on the railroad, so we had this poor guy smuggling tea into Maine. Anytime one of us went to Canada on vacation, we were given cash to bring back boxes. Tea mules, as it were, but fortunately the gauze sachets were not secreted in any uncomfortable places. Last summer I went to Montreal, and the only souvenirs in my suitcase were six boxes of tea. King Cole can also be ordered online, which somehow takes all the fun out of it.
Tea is the new “hot” thing for health. According to the website:
A growing body of research indicates that the tannins in tea are naturally-occurring flavonoids that have strong antioxidant properties. Drinking tea is a natural and pleasant way to increase dietary intake of antioxidants.
There is mounting evidence that suggests that antioxidant-rich foods may play a role in reducing the risk of certain cancers, heart disease and stroke.
Sign me up.
Tea has been a regular part of English life since the 1660s. It gained in popularity when Charles II married Catherine of Braganza. She was a teetotaler who preferred tea to wine and ale, and soon everyone at court was drinking tea. Eventually, the public sipped along with the aristocracy.
English people take their tea seriously. The London Times printed letters for months whether one should add milk before or after the tea is in the cup. Opinion was mixed. And heated.
Tea rooms in Britain today serve “full” tea from three to five o’clock. On the menu: savories (small sandwiches and appetizers), scones with clotted cream and jam, cakes, cookies, shortbread and other sweets. And tea, of course. I guess I’ll have to skip dinner.
Drinking tea is obligatory in most historicals, even though the heroes always mutter that it’s swill. Sebastian in Suzanne Enoch’s Sins of a Duke drinks tea that is “awful, something bitter and tasting like old sticks.”
Classes are taught in tea etiquette. There are rigid and mysterious rituals associated with it in China, Korea and Japan. Apparently tea had something to do with the founding of a country, too. I just know I like to drink it, hot or cold.
What’s your pleasure? Coffee, tea, or both? If tea, milk or lemon?
What ritual do you have that makes you happy? Any exercise/health hints you swear by? Do you take vitamins? Thank goodness for Centrum Silver.
If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty. ~Japanese Proverb
We had a kettle; we let it leak:Our not repairing made it worse.We haven’t had any tea for a week…The bottom is out of the Universe.~Rudyard Kipling
Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane. ~Honoré de Balzac
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Jun 27, 2007
Romance. We’re addicted to it. We think we can never get enough of it, either in fiction or real life. But like a steady diet of anything, I wonder if we’d really like it if we ate it all the time. I do like to read other stuff—mostly mysteries, thrillers, the occasional “women’s fiction” (whatever that means), history. I don’t do self-help books. I’m either perfect or beyond saving, not sure which.
And the man in my life? We’ve been talking Tall, Dark and Handsome all week long, and he qualifies. He can be quite a romantic, too. Examples will follow. But I’d probably think he was a pod person if he behaved too well. Would we really like a guy to anticipate and take care of our every need, gush how great we are everywhere he went? Think Tom Cruise. Think couches. Poor Katie. Kate.
When I met my husband, he was a college student. I had already graduated and was working in New York City. He’s still older than I am, if you were wondering. For our first date, he sold blood to finance dinner and a movie. He then took a two-hour bus trip from New Jersey to the Port Authority, walked over forty blocks, bought me cheap champagne and flowers. When we walked to the restaurant, he asked me if I liked chicken. I said yes. “Take a wing,” he replied, extending his elbow. So hokey, but that first Friday night date lasted the whole weekend and we are extremely married.
When I turned 40, he sent 40 red roses. Okay, so every one of them died the next day. I thought it was an omen, but it wasn’t his fault.
He gets my car filled with gas Saturday mornings while I sit in my pajamas typing. If they didn’t yap about it on the news, I’d never know gas prices are outrageous. And then he grocery shops, which I hate.
There are lots of little things he does for me. Maybe not grand gestures like heroes do in books and movies. We’re not dancing in the dark like Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse (You thought I’d say Ginger Rogers, didn’t you? But I looked it up.) and he’s not swinging me around the factory floor like Richard Gere does to Debra Winger. But he does our taxes. Sometimes we even get a refund.
What’s your most memorable romantic moment? Something that happened to you, something in fiction or film? Let’s get a little mushy.
Check back July 1 for the next contest!
I think we’d all agree that Jane Austen is the godmother of the modern romance novel. Her books have never gone out of print. Not everybody has been a fan, though—I thought I’d quote some heresy to raise your hackles and heat you up!
