The Neglected Reading List, pt. 2

I had something of a Jane Austen fetish when I was in my teens, as many a well-read teen-aged girl does. I made no secret of it at the time, either. I received two different copies of Emma as gifts within weeks of one another. Persuasion was the first book I ever read on Project Gutenberg. I adored the BBC's six-hour adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for its attention to detail and cursed Emma Thompson for turning Sense and Sensibility's Elinor Dashwood into a thirty-something-year-old spinster instead of the sensible nineteen-year-old that she was supposed to be (not that there's anything wrong with thirty-something-year-old spinsters, as I aspire to be one myself, but I think if Austen wanted a heroine of that age and situation, she wouldn't have specified otherwise in the first chapter of the novel).

I read all six of her completed novels. I watched multiple film adaptations (and hated most of them). I considered myself quite in the know, but I utterly refused to touch any of her uncompleted works, because I can't stand not knowing how a story ends.

Well.

The fetish waned and I moved on to other literary interests. Years passed. And then I came across a copy of Sanditon by Jane Austen and Another Lady. I thought, "Eh, why not?"

(I should here note that the bookmark currently sitting within my copy is an advertisement for the 51st Annual VNSA Book Sale, which occurred on February 10th & 11th of 2007. That means I bought this book at said book sale in 2006, because they always hand out fliers for the next year, and I always shove said fliers into one of the books I have just purchased. I don't call it a neglected reading list as a joke.)

At some point or another I read the first three chapters (or so the bookmark told me, and I never randomly place those, as that would be misleading). I didn't remember them at all when I picked the book up again a few days ago, so I started from the beginning this time. Since I already knew that there was a second author involved, I was kind of looking for discrepancies. According to the copyright page, it was written in or around 1975, after all, which is a far cry from Regency England. Would it be obvious that someone else added to Austen's unfinished manuscript? Would the two works flow together? The Chicago Tribune Book World boldly declares on the first page, "even [Jane Austen] would approve!" Would she really?

Maybe, maybe not. I don't know of a lot of people who would approve someone else coming in and commandeering one of their creative projects. But the truth is, the second author does a fine job of seaming together where Austen's manuscript ends and hers begins. If I hadn't known which chapter and line to look at, I wouldn't have noticed the change in voice at all. In that particular spot.

It has been said that a forgery is best in the moment of its creation, that as time moves away from that particular moment, a forgery will become more and more noticeable in contrast with the artist's original work. I believe this. I believe it because we each put something not only of ourselves but of the world around us into our work. The forger* usually has to combat ideals and standards of an entirely different time and place. If the original artist is particularly famous, each succeeding generation develops themes and theories on his or her work, and those themes and theories become embedded in the forger's work as unconsciously as the artist's own world was embedded into the original. Because to truly copy an artist, you have to study that artist, but you're never going to live the same life and have the same experiences that shaped another person's creative process. We each have a distinctive fingerprint.

In literature, this fingerprint is more pronounced. Or maybe it only seems so to me because I've studied syntax and pragmatics. The distinct linguistic markers that make up one person's diction are fairly difficult to mimic.

In short, her chapters are too long. Her choice of words in many places are suspect. She describes fads of the era when I rather suspect that Jane Austen would not have thought them worth describing. But of course, that's my opinion. Short of performing a linguistic analysis (which I technically am capable of doing but don't really care to attempt), I can't really comment on the structure any further.

(I stand by my assessment of her chapters, though. Austen accomplishes 11 in 71 pages. The second author accomplishes only 19 in 236. That means that 63.3% of the chapters cover 76.4% of the book. When you factor in that Emma has 55 chapters, Mansfield Park has 48, and Pride and Prejudice has 61, it's fairly apparent that Austen likes to divide her story into shorter sections than her modern-era counterpart prefers. But then, she was writing by hand, so she probably needed to take more frequent breaks to avoid cramping.)

All of this, though, is fairly moot. Why? Because despite stylistic differences, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Thoroughly. So much so, that I went back and reread a few passages again after I had finished. And they weren't even Jane's!

Sure, I knew I wasn't reading Jane Austen. Sure, it sometimes felt like the author was trying to imitate Georgette Heyer instead (especially with a couple of incidents towards the end). But guess what? I like Georgette Heyer. And I've had plenty enough exposure to Regency-setting novels to recognize that one whose premise was set up by the great Jane Austen herself is far superior to a lot of the dross out there.

So, Sanditon by Jane Austen and Another Lady? I loved it. I'll happily recommend it. And I'm kind of glad it took me four years to get around to reading it, because I needed some brain candy something good to read this week.

*I'm not using the term "forger" here in a derogatory or critical manner. Yes, forgers are usually considered criminals, but they are also incredible artists. It takes boatloads of talent and training to imitate a master, but if you can pass off your own work as the work of someone else, that's a forgery, regardless of whether there are criminal charges attached. In my book, anyway. I'm glad we've cleared that up.