Voices: Grappling with Jane Austen

I had never read a Jane Austen book until the summer before my freshman year of college. For years I had neglected to pick up this chick lit favorite, with no good excuse. I had nothing against Jane Austen. I even liked the Pride and Prejudice movie that had come out two years earlier. Yet I had some strange, unexplainable wariness towards her books.

At my good friend’s insistence, I finally gave Austen a go. I wanted a story I didn’t know, so I chose Sense and Sensibility. I had just torn through Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, and expected a quick turnover rate here, too.

Talk about a quagmire.

I suffered through Sense and Sensibility for weeks. I knew ahead of time to expect predictable, simple plots, but I didn’t expect such verbose and boring lag time between the actual moments of drama. There were maybe three or four major plot twists, and they came a mile away. In between, I was left with an uninteresting story that dropped endless hints to the same twists I knew from the start. What of Austen’s wit I had heard so much about? She had her moments, but there was no steady beacon of humor guiding me through this tortuous reading experience.

Since that first Austen encounter, I’ve also read Emma and Persuasion. I enjoyed those more, but still don’t get the hype. I think my problem with Austen comes down to this: she has good stories but isn’t a spectacular writer. Getting to the ending where they all rise the social ladder and live happily ever after is far more tiresome than it needs to be. It also explains why Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility is the only movie adaptation I've liked more than the original book. Details and description are great, but they have to engage the reader. For me Austen, fails in that regard.

Maybe I'm being unfair. I have yet to tackle Austen's masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, after all. But based on what I've read so far, I think I'll stick with Seth Grahame-Smith's brilliant mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.


Photo: Saucy Salad