A Curious Statistical Anomaly

A bit late with this, but I did manage to see Sunday’s installment of The Complete Jane Austen — Mansfield Park. The previous version of Mansfield Park that I’d seen was directed by Patricia Rozema and starred Hannah Taylor-Gordon (DVD cover pictured to the left). While that one was indeed a nice movie, it didn’t have the flavor of Austen and had been considerably modernized for feminine equality and sensibilities. Unfortunately, Jane Austen wrote for her times not ours and while many of her women are strong characters, they acted within the bounds of class and society in which they found themselves.

The Masterpiece Theatre version directed by Iain B. MacDonald was much closer to the heart of Jane Austen’s novel. I read the novel several years ago, and while I occasionally reread Austen (her books are some of my comfort reading), I haven’t reread Mansfield Park. Fanny Price is sent at a young age to live with relatives as her family can no longer handle all their children. She therefore has a precarious position — neither one of them or a stranger. Fanny manages to grow up without making waves and secretly in love with her cousin Edmund. Life goes on, Fanny remains in the background and then the Crawfords visit. Mary Crawford and her brother are on a par socially with the Bertrams but they’re schemers and out for mischief. This is only one of the plot threads. The movie, not having the time to deal with the full texture of the novel extracts only this limited storyline and uses that for the movie. While it’s satisfying for what it is, it does make me wish for a fully coverage of the novel with all it’s intrigue and plot twists intact.

So, once again a miss but only because of time constraints, at least the characters acted as one would expect from the book (its time and social milieu intact). Fanny was much more the Fanny of Jane Austen than in previous versions so that’s a win. So, enjoyable but forget what you know of the book and just enjoy an interesting movie, well done but not quite Mansfield Park.

I have to admit I’m a real fan of Jane Austen’s books. I’ve read all but Lady Susan and Persuasion (though I’ve started it twice). Wouldn’t you know it, I also missed seeing Persuasion last Sunday. But, this Sunday, I managed to get myself settled down in front of the TV to view Northanger Abbey. I’d never seen this version of the novel before. The version I own is the BBC (1986) one. They both do an admirable job of telling the story of Catherine Morland, a spirited young woman with a good heart and a very active imagination, as she vacations with family friends in Bath, meets some interesting and nefarious people, visits an Abbey, get scared and confused, falls in love, gets sent home in disgrace, and becomes a bit more cautious with her trust and heart.

Northanger Abbey was written as a bit of satire on all the Gothic romances of the day that were inflaming the minds of young women and taking them away from any serious study of books, their surroundings, or their circumstances. When I tried to read Jane Austen years ago as literature — well, I never really could get anywhere with it. But, once I realized that it’s like anthropology, a study of a new and different culture, it became, for me, more interesting and absorbing. Austen was an astute observer of her friends, neighbors, and family. She noticed as well as thought about what happened around her. Her books are filled with pithy statements and keen observations of the human condition. She was also a woman of her times as well and there is a sensitivity to the plight of women in her social strata. There’s little in Austen that speaks of the lower or lowest classes of society in her time even thought there might occasionally be a reference to an incident here or there. The politics of her works are the politics of class and society and little of the times in which she lived.

PBS should be applauded for introducing, I hope, a new audience to her works via these films. While no adaptation of a novel can compete with the written word for depth and texture — they can give the viewer a taste of the rich world that Austen opened up for those of us reading her words so many years after her death. Now that I’ve seen two version of Northanger Abbey, I’d be hard pressed to say which I prefer — they each have their pluses and minuses — their moments of pure Austen-ism and their clinkers. What I can say is that I throughly enjoyed the presentation and have added this DVD to my ‘must buy’ list.

I checked but don’t see that PBS is re-running the series anytime soon so, if you’ve missed Northanger Abbey this evening — rent it. Don’t despair though because next Sunday at 9PM is Mansfield Park (again a version I haven’t yet seen). I’ve marked my calendar and hope this next film meets my expectations for excellence in presenting the work of Jane Austen and not a similarly titled work that might have nodded in her direction as the previous movie version of this book, that I saw,  seemed to be. I have high hopes for next week since Northanger Abbey was so satisfying.

Tonight we went to a concert in Baltimore, MD. Pre-concert we decided to try out the newly opened Night of the Cookers at 885 N. Howard St., Baltimore, MD. The menu is very southern, in fact, New Orleans fare predominates as the chef is from the New Orleans area. The atmosphere is very nice — wood floors, comfortable tables and chairs, light enough to see but not put you in a spotlight, and friendly servers. It was also comfortable to talk. There’s a bar area and seating area.

The restaurant is very new, having opened one week ago — along with the advent of the cold, wet, rainy/snowy weather. We weren’t a rowdy crowd (there were 6 of us) but we’re all reviewers and thus into asking lots of questions. The server was friendly and informative about the menu, the restaurant, and the selections. In fact, since things were a bit slow (we were the only customers — if was early for dinning), we got to meet the manager and the chef came out to talk with us. Chef Joshua Hill certainly has the credentials for New Orleans cooking as he lived in the area.

Among the six of us we tried most of the dishes and all were excellent. A couple of us thought some of the food was a bit sweet but we had colds so our taste was a bit off — but it was still delicious. I don’t drink beer but was told that the beer on tap was great. Here’s the chef to show a bit of the menu:

Really, if you’re heading for an evening of music at the Baltimore Symphony in the Meyerhoff, plan to eat at Night of the Cookers. Food is great. Prices are reasonable and the atmosphere downhome friendly. Soon there will be takeout as well.

Since I’m on a panel on “Return of the Living Dead” at PhilCon this coming weekend, I decided I’d better finish listening to the audio CDs of World War Z by Max Brooks. I’m really impressed. The actors playing the parts are really good — they have the accents and verbal mannerisms down so that you actually belief what you are listening to — and it’s done in such a straight-forward manner that you sometimes can forget that this isn’t real. Basically, it’s survivors of the world wide zombie infestation talking about what it was like just before, during, and a bit after the war. It’s various personal stories told to a reporter making up a report on the outbreak and aftermath.

This is an abridgment of the book but each story we hear is supposed to be complete. Like his earlier work , The Zombie Survival Guide it takes the subject and treats it seriously. World War Z has stories from people who survived. Some of them are not nice people, some of them are, and some of them you’d wish had been left behind with the zombies because they sold people out. All in all, it’s well done and a good way to spend time if you have something else to do — I’m working on a sweater I’m knitting, so my ears are free to listen.