A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809. He was a writer, poet, and critic. He wrote mysteries, horror, and just plain weird stories. His poetry was often sad and/or depressing but mostly unforgettable. Classics Illustrated #4: The Raven & Other Poems has a good selection of his poetry illustrated by Gahan Wilson.

I first read many of his short stories in a collection that my grandfather let me read when I was quite young. Some of the stories kept me up at night with a flashlight for company and to keep the shadows at bay. Many people know of Poe’s writing even if they haven’t read it themselves. I doubt there are many people in the English speaking world who don’t connect raven’s with the word, “Nevermore”.

In Baltimore, there has been a tradition that on Poe’s birthday someone in the dead of night leaves a rose and a bottle of cognac on his grave. This year the watchers who keep a vigil waiting for this person to show up reported that the tribute to Poe was not left on his grave. A tradition of over sixty years maybe at an end. There have been two visitors to the grave. The first left a note and said he couldn’t do it anymore and someone else took up the mantle. Was the mysterious visitor ill? Has this person now gone to talk with Poe in person beyond the veil? Who knows. The watchers who wait for this yearly visitor will keep their vigil for another two years before they give up hope.

Whether this mysterious visitor once again visits Poe’s grave to leave a tribute of a rose and a bottle of cognac, people will go on reading Poe’s works, and enjoying the genres that he helped to develop. There may not be any more tributes left at his graveside but his legacy to literature lives on with readers everywhere.

Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775 and died in 1817.  She was 41 when she died.  During her life she wrote several novels that live in the hearts of her many readers.  The novels (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibilities, Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Lady Susan) have been in print almost continuously.  I say almost because during her lifetime, she found it very difficult to get her novels published and she made very little money from them.

The books have been made into movies that either use the books as a base and then modernize the nearly out of recognition (Clueless) to the wonderful BBC productions.  I own most of the BBC and A&E movies and watch them often.  I also love the books and find that they have joined the other books on my comfort shelf for those times when I really need to visit with some dear and old friends — special books.

There are societies and clubs that have sprung up where those who enjoy her works can get together and discuss them in depth as well as the society that is depicted in the novels and other related topics.

You can find a brief biography of Jane Austen’s life on the website of the Jane Austen Society UK. This biography includes photos of some of the places where she lived.

The Republic of Pemberley has a wealth of information on Jane Austen, her life and times, and her works. Including the text of her major novels. I’ll warn you if you’re a fan of her works you can lose a lot of hours just dipping into the various areas of this website.

There have also been many books written that either continue the stories of Jane Austen’s characters or deal with the impact that her novels have had on readers. I’ve reviewed a number of these books (and movies) on this blog. You’ll find them if you scroll through the Reviews link at the top of the page.

So, celebrate Jane Austen’s birthday. Go read a book.

With Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia married, Mrs. Bennet has set her sights on marrying off Mary and Kitty. Since Kitty is currently away visiting her sisters, Jane and Elizabeth, Mary is taking the brunt of Mrs. Bennet’s efforts. While Mary is willing to meekly follow Mrs. Bennet’s instructions to smile and dance, she has no intention of marrying as she firmly believes that it is not a state she wishes to enter, having observed her sister’s marriages.

Ward has chosen to focus on Mary, the least understood and most overlooked of the Bennet sisters– in fact, in some movies based loosely on the original Austen story, they leave Mary out altogether. In A Match for Mary Bennet, Mary is very much as she was in Pride and Prejudice. She studies and reads but does not always get from the reading what most people would expect. She sees only the surface and assumes that what you see is all there is to a person. She doesn’t lie herself, and assumes everyone tells the truth. In a society based so much on hiding a person’s true emotions, Mary’s character leaves her ill prepared to deal with the world as it is. Luckily for Mary, she is somewhat protected by her family.

Mary also believes that people with authority are voices of reason; I believe that this is why she has been so taken with Mr. Collins. Her mother tells her Lizzie married Mr. Darcy to make up for refusing Mr. Collins and it was a huge sacrifice on Lizzie’s part. Mr. Collins tells Mary to never speak of Lydia again–to pretend she died. If authority says something, Mary doesn’t question–until she meets the new minister Mr. Darcy has chosen for Kympton, Mr. Oliver.

Without her sisters, Mary finds she’s asked to dance at the assemblies and that she also has to take part in conversations. We find that she’s not shallow. Mary has a good head on her shoulders, she just assumes that people are what they appear to be and when they ask a question — that is the question they are asking. As readers we find that Mary gives good advice. After meeting Mr. Oliver, she begins to pay more attention to the people around her and learns that she has often missed seeing the true person. Mary grows.

Her sisters’, Jane and Elizabeth, and their husbands, are aware that Mary doesn’t wish to marry and they manage to assist her in finding security in case she doesn’t change her mind.

There’s a lot going on in this book besides Mary finding herself and new inner strength to stand up for herself. Many of the original characters from Pride and Prejudice appear and continue their lives in concert with the way they were set in motion in that original book. Life goes on in the world of Pemberly and the people live their lives. Ward has fashioned an interesting story and has given us an interesting take on a Mary Bennet. It may not be to everyone’s taste as religion is a large part of Mary’s life and thus is a large part of her moving forward to become a more independent person. It’s not preachy and it’s totally in character.  And as it shaped Mary in Pride and Prejudice it shapes her thoughts and actions in A Match for Mary Bennet. And as readers, we come to know her better for spending some time with her.

I was reaching for a book to take it off the shelf and got a pretty bad gash from the dust jacket. That got me thinking that most of the cuts on my hands have been paper cuts. Should books and paper be reclassified as dangerous weapons? Should those TSA people start making us put newspapers, magazines, and books in our check through? I remember that they did forbid books for a while in flights from Britain to the US when there was an incident that had nothing to do with books a while back.

Sometimes, it makes you rethink things, but could it be that they were afraid people would read something scary or incendiary and throw a fit? Do people get passionate about their reading material anymore?

I know that I’ve burst out laughing while reading a passage or been sniffling back sobs and tears and had people step away from the crazy person. Friends have told me that they often react to what they’re reading by laughing, crying, or getting emotional in other ways.

But with my throbbing paper cut, I’m thinking maybe ideas aren’t the only danger that books possess.

What do you think?

I’d been having Just Jane by Nancy Moser popping up on my recommendations on Amazon for quite a while and saw it on sale at Sam’s Club and thought what the heck might as well give it a try. Besides the reviews on Amazon when I checked it out seemed mainly positive.

As a novel of the life of Jane Austen, Just Jane covers the facts of her life adequately. Told from the point of view of Jane, you’d expect the same wittiness that Austen was known for but in that regard it never quite gets up to what I expected. However, the author, as it turns out, didn’t expect to write to the voice of Austen just the facts of Austen. Having recently read, Cassandra and Jane: A Jane Austen Novel by Jill Pitkeathley, I found Just Jane to be much kinder to Cassandra and much more clinical in the laying out of Austen’s life story.

As a narrative of the life of Jane Austen, Just Jane works and works well. It covers all the highlights of the family, their inter-relationships, visits, births, deaths, marriages, moves, the books and their publication. It just never got me to make an emotional attachment to Jane Austen. This was surprising because in many ways Jane Austen was a precursor to the modern woman. She was a woman who chafed at not being able to control her own life, manage her own monetary affairs or even control her publications without a male taking part in the business of publishing. However, with the support and encouragement of her family, she wrote books that are still in print and revered today for her incisive portrayal of her society. Jane Austen was a clear eyed observer of what went on around her. She studied people and herself and managed to give her readers a look at what life was like for people in that strata of society. The fact that they were also in many ways love stories with the female characters getting married at the end didn’t hurt either.

While Moser does an admirable job of presenting the factual time line as a fictional narrative, it lacks the passion and emotional impact that I would have liked to have read for a fictionalized biography of the author. So while it didn’t really tell me any more than I already knew, or make me feel like I understood Jane Austen any better, it was an interesting and factual account of her life as we know it from Austen’s letters and writings.

I’m not going to comment on the religious overtones of the characterization of Jane Austen because I have no real way to know how she acted around others during her lifetime. However, I do feel that, based on the times, that she wouldn’t feel the need to resort to telling people she was going to pray for them or the Lord would take care and so on and so on. Why? Because at that time religion was such an integral part of life that it would go without saying that prayers would be said for those in need. As the daughter and sister of ministers, Austen’s life was steeped in religion and the church and it would “just” be and not need mentioning. I think it’s fairly common now-a-days to point out how religious one is in order to show just how important religion is to their life — actions speak louder than words and always have. It would be unnecessary to continually harp on the religious nature of Austen’s life because her actions in visiting the poor, helping her neighbors, traveling miles to be with a friend who is caring for an ill relative — give the same information via the acts. Since the actions are in the story, the words are unnecessary and without the actions they are not to be believed.

All in all, an interesting fictionalized biography of Jane Austen. However, Cassandra and Jane has more of an emotional undercurrent that infuses the incidents with emotional as well as factual weight while Just Jane remains at arm’s length. I’m not sorry I read Just Jane, and I’d recommend it for someone looking for a fictional biography. I just feel that it could have been better, especially since it is told from Jane Austen’s point of view, if it had approached Austen’s wit and cleverness.

Marsha Altman was gracious enough to make A Curious Statistical Anomaly a stop on her Blog Tour and talk about her newest book, The Plight of the Darcy Brothers. We’ll be giving away 1 set of Marsha’s two books: The Darcy’s and the Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (must have a mailing address in the US or Canada). I will pick a random person who as posted a comment on this blog post as the winner. Winner will be chosen on August 19th.

I’m the author of The Plight of the Darcy Brothers, a sequel to The Darcys and the Bingleys, which is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. And it is a series; book 3 (Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape) is due out in Feb 2010. Gayle asked me to talk about the problems of remaining true to the original characters once I’m beyond the scope of the original Austen book, and in book 2, about four years have passed since the wedding, other people are married too, and there are kids. I would say I’m pretty past the scope.

The real answer, as I see it, is that there is no way to remain true to the original characters because there is no one set of “original characters.” Every person who reads Pride and Prejudice comes away with a different impression of how the characters acted and how they would like them to act in a sequel. I have my own interpretation; at times it’s wild and at times it’s pretty straightforward. As an author, my job is to make it presentable, so even if the reader doesn’t agree with it, the reader is at least willing to accept it.

A prime example is the first book, which got a lot of criticism for having Darcy be a lush and therefore the butt of several jokes while in college. I didn’t think making Darcy a lush was at all negative to his character. You work up a tolerance for alcohol by drinking a lot, and Regency gentlemen drank more than a lot. The idea that Darcy has a lower tolerance means that he is very conservative in his alcohol consumption, perhaps fearing that a slovenly image would harm his family name (which is so clearly important to him in Austen’s work), and as a result he doesn’t have much of a tolerance compared to his peers, so when he does drink, he gets very drunk quickly. Since Darcy lives on his high horse, his college friends (and Wickham, of course) take any advantage they can get to knock him off it. In other words, he’s so virtuous that people enjoy seeing him knocked down a peg, albeit in a friendly way. I felt it was an amusing way to soften Darcy, but some readers didn’t agree, as Darcy is not supposed to be ridiculous. I can see their point, but it’s the story I wanted to write, so I wrote it.

Much less controversial methods of maintaining a tone involve simply expanding a character, keeping the old ideas in place but implying there are other facets of a character’s personality we haven’t seen before. Bingley is still overly sweet and has bad handwriting, and knows his judgment when it comes to assessing relationships can be flawed, something he learned in Pride and Prejudice, which is why he went to Darcy for help vetting Caroline Bingley’s suitor in my first book. On the other hand I felt no need to make him a complete idiot. His father was massively successful in trade, so Bingley is good with numbers and languages. He’s not experienced running an estate but he’s a fast learner. Caroline and Louisa show the same qualities; Caroline’s knowledge of Italian was what put her so constantly in Dr. Maddox’s presence that she married him. In Pride and Prejudice, Caroline Bingley was a snob, obsessed with fashion, stature, and putting other people down. Adding intelligence doesn’t contradict that. Even after she marries someone arguably below her station (though he was born well above her station), she maintains a certain edge absent in Jane and even Elizabeth. The important thing is that it isn’t directed at her husband and doesn’t bother him, and being married and settled predictably makes her a bit softer, as most of her cattiness in Austen’s work was due to trying to woo Darcy and shun Elizabeth, something she no longer has to do.

I’m supposed to end these guest blog posts with a question to start a discussion pertaining to my novel, but as this is the last stop on my blog tour, so I’ll ask this instead: Chicken or fish?

About the Author

Marsha Altman is a historian specializing in Rabbinic literature in late antiquity, and an author. She is also an expert on Jane Austen sequels, having read nearly every single one that’s been written, whether published or unpublished. She has worked in the publishing industry with a literary agency and is writing a series continuing the story of the Darcys and the Bingleys. She lives in New York.

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre starts on the morning of the wedding of Elizabeth and Jane to Darcy and Bingley. Austen always married her heroines off and ends with the wedding or the wedding on the horizon. I imagine that she wanted us all to dream of their happily ever afters. Austen had enough couples around her to know that not all matches ended in happiness — so she never went beyond the joyful anticipation of the wedding.

Jane and Elizabeth are nervous and ecstatically happy to be marrying men they love — that these men are also rich adds to the joy of the day. Immediately after the service Darcy and Elizabeth are to tour the Lake District. But once in the carriage, Darcy reveals that he has changed their plans and they are going to Paris. Elizabeth is surprised but not against the plan. However, as the days pass, she become uneasy as Darcy seems to be struggling with some inner turmoil. Even more troubling to Elizabeth is that he hasn’t yet come to her room. She fears that he’s regretting the match.

It’s hard to discuss Mr. Darcy, Vampyre — or even read it — without being reminded of Bran Stoker’s Dracula; though the author said she was more influenced by Dr. Polidori’s The Vampyre. Jonathan Harker kept a journal. It was the pages of his journal that let the reader and his dear Mina vicariously experience the terror of his ordeal. These journal entries, as well as the more familiar narrative and newspaper reports,  give Dracula an  immediacy and a sense of reality to unrealistic events. In Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, Elizabeth writes letters to Jane trying in her own way to share her fears and misgivings about her marriage, Darcy’s withdrawn nature, and their erratic travels, and the people that they meet.

Darcy moves them from Paris to visit a relative he wants to consult with. They travel through the Alps and beyond where people greet the carriage by hastily crossing themselves. There’s more journeys to Venice and then Italy. Elizabeth is sure that something more is going on than what she sees or hears, but she’s unsure what it means or what to do. Phrases that don’t make sense. Lady Catherine showing up to fight with Darcy over his marriage. No matter how much she begs Darcy to talk to her he demurs and puts her off.

Elizabeth is such a strong character in Pride and Prejudice that her confusion and insecurity is cause for alarm in the reader. The parallels with Stoker’s Dracula echo throughout the narrative — subtle but enough to cue readers into what’s going on even if the title has been Mr. Darcy and his Bride. The book is dedicated to Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey, but Elizabeth is no Catherine lost to her imagination and waiting to be rescued. Elizabeth’s “courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate” her. She stands up for herself making some difficult decisions. She doesn’t wait to be rescued she takes matters into her own hands.

Grange deviates significantly from the traditional tropes of vampire fiction. While the differences are significant there are other authors who have used some of these same deviations so a fan of vampire fiction would not scoff at the books –at least not until they read the ending. However, fans of Pride and Prejudice, with some exceptions, will be willing to forgive the deus ex machine ending simply because it allows of our favorite literary couples to continue their journey.

This is not a spoof of Gothic literature but a true melding of vampire fiction with a Pride and Prejudice follow on story. If you’re a Austen purists you probably won’t pick the book up anyway, but if you enjoy taking a chance on something a bit different, I think you’ll find the Darcy and Elizabeth of Pride and Prejudice working through some tough, and rather unexpected problems as they settle into their marriage.

Have you ever sat down to read a new novel and found hours later that it’s after midnight and you need to work tomorrow but what the heck, you need to finish this story? Well, that’s getting lost in a good book. Some people get so wrapped up in the story and the world between the covers of the book that the world in which they live just disappears for a while.

I remember when I was around 11 or so, my mother had to go out and left the pot roast cooking, and I was to check it every now and then and, if I could see the roast, add a bit of water. I’d done that before lots of time with her there and she was only going next door. But I was reading a book about a jungle and the main character was hiding from the bad guys in the fog in the jungle. Mom came home to a house full of smoke and a burnt pot roast. I realized that there was smoke or fog, but it was part of the story, so I just thought it was really real, I could even smell the burning campfire. Mom never let me forget that and I could never make her understand that I didn’t know the pot roast was burning because I was in the jungle a gazillion miles away.

Well, evidently, some scientists wondered if people who read text actually had physical reactions as they read as if they were doing what they were reading about. An article in New Science written by Andrea Thompson called “Why We Get Lost in a Book” explains the research study and some of their results. Evidently, if you read about throwing a ball or moving to a new area, the parts of the brain that would be activated if you were doing it for real also get activated, but to a lesser degree, if you’re reading about it.

Of course the study group was fairly small (28 people) and the reading material as described was bland and boring. I’m surprised they got any results at all, especially since there were 20 women and 8 men and the reading material was from a book called One Boy’s Day. Just the title makes me think of the fascinating activity of watching paint dry — wonder why?

But, at least it’s a beginning. They also found that some people have stronger reactions to reading than others — no surprise there. I might suggest that those with stronger MRI reactions found the material more interesting than those who didn’t, but that’s just me.

Reading is an activity that we all hope people will participate in. In this day and age, everyone needs a basic reading skill level in order to function. For some that’s enough but others spend their free time reading. There are non-readers, people who read for work and necessity and those that also read for pleasure. I often think that reading for pleasure is a nerd activity in a lot of ways, or at least I was always told it was because I preferred a book to sports or watching TV or just hanging out.

Now that we have the first “proof” that reading effect the various centers of the brain as if the activity we’re reading about was happening — what makes some people react more than others. Why do some people go on and become readers and some become extreme-readers and some just give it up and become non-readers (meaning they can read but don’t).

And will definitions of reading change as more and more of our material goes online. I know many people (including teens/students) who read constantly online but seldom crack a book — instead reading books online or on their cell phones or Kindles. For some reason, some researchers don’t consider that reading because it’s not on paper.

To me, reading is reading no matter whether the words are on paper, cereal box, sides of buses and building, street signs, ipods, Kindles, laptop or desktops. However, it’s nice to know that some of us really do get lost in good books — but we usually find our way out with new ideas, new experiences, and new knowledge.