A Curious Statistical Anomaly

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.

It was the blurb for Waking Life that got me interested:

Product Description
From Richard Linklater comes one of the most imaginative animated features ever made. This funny, ingenious film, which Rolling Stone Magazine calls “nothing short of amazing,” explores the fascinating question: “Are we sleep-walking through our waking state or wake- walking through our dreams”? Join Wiley Wiggins as he searches for answers to life’s most important questions in a world that may or may not be reality in the “most visually alive movie of the year.” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times)

It came from Netflix the other day and we just watched it this afternoon. This is one of those films that does take the term “weird” to new heights — but in a good way. Animated, the film has more options and scope for weirdness since so much can be done with animation at lower cost than with special effects and the directors used the media splendidly to highlight the thoughts being expressed by the characters.

A young man is returning home and gets a ride from a man in a boat-car that already has one passenger. From there things just get stranger. As we follow the young man around it seems like he’s working on a research project to gather various people’s viewpoints on consciousness, the meaning of life, religion, perceptions, and good vs evil, heaven vs hell. Then as things continue it seems that maybe he’s day dreaming or dreaming. The conversations and monologues give you the clues you need to determine what’s going on but they are buried in the discussions of various philosophies, psychological theories, and biological theories of consciousness and perception.

It may take a while to figure out what’s happening and even if you do there’s no way to be sure that what you believe is happening is in fact what is happening. I believe that’s the point of the film — to make the audience think. Think not just about what the movie is about but about the ideas that are expressed as our main character moves about the landscape listening to the people he meets.

I’m a child of the 60s and much of the intellectual theories and topics expressed are those that were bandied about during that era in the hallways of colleges, coffee houses, friends apartments, political meetings, and late night gab sessions where-ever. There were no answers then and I don’t believe there are or will ever really be definitive answers to the questions of whether we are the dream or the dreamer of the nature of consciousness and life.

This movie woke those memories of my past, those philosophy classes in college, and the late night talks with friends. So, whether I enjoyed the movie because of my background, or because I hope that these discussions are still occurring among today’s young adults — I do hope that many people are thinking about these issues and examining the life they are leading, not just to measure their success with yardsticks that have multiple scales that include personal growth, love, joy, friendship, connectedness to others, as well as financial success, control of others, and power. We should always live every moment as if it was special and never to be repeated because in fact each moment of our lives is special.

If you’ve seen this movie, I’d love to hear your opinion on it. If you haven’t seen it and enjoy movies that play with your head, check it out and get back to me and leave a comment.

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.

Tonight we watched Tuck Everlasting. Released in 2003 and starring Alexis Bledel, Jonathan Jackson, Sissy Spacek, William Hurt, Scott Bairstow and directed by Jay Russell. It’s based on the book of the same name by Natalie Babbitt. It’s been years since I read the book but it seemed to me to follow the basic story line.

Years ago when I read the book, I didn’t understand why Winnie chose to not drink — to get old and die. Now, I think I do understand to a degree. But I still think I would have wanted that time — an eternity. To not grow old. To not be sick or ill. To have all the time in the world. Most people think they’d like that — to live forever — but then most people are bored out of their minds if they have to sit for ten minutes with nothing to do.

I’ve always been fascinated by vampires. Not because they are strong and sexy and whatever else is attributed to them but because they live forever if they don’t get staked. All that time to learn, to see new things, to experience the wonder of a changing world. But they have that drawback of drinking blood — ewwww — I don’t think so…

On the other hand, the Tucks drink water. So, all the benefits and none of the drawbacks except the one big one. You can’t let people know you live forever or they’ll all want longer life. And the big one — the people you love will grow old and die. If you marry you’ll want your spouse to live forever, and then your children, and then their spouses and children and soon there’s a world of people who live forever. So, you live secretly and alone.

Still there’s the unlimited time to learn and learn, to read, to study, to explore. It is seductive. Yet, Winnie chose to live her life fully and to greet each day with joy and move along on the wheel of life. Courage. She made her choice at 15 and yet could have changed her mind at any time and didn’t.

Babbitt’s book asked some hard questions and posed some possibilities, and the movie and the book leave the reader/viewer to continue to think about life, time, and eternity. I believe this film was extremely well done. And, I further believe that some of the best writing, asking the big questions without giving answers, is in the young adult field.

If you haven’t seen the film, check it out. Even better than the film is the book.

The Plight of the Darcy Brothers begins several months after the ending of The Darcys & the Bingleys. Elizabeth has miscarried. She and Darcy are devastated but they have their son, Geoffrey, who is very much like his father, and they are assured that there will be more children.

Starting with such sadness, you’d expect this book to be much darker than its predecessor, but there is hope. Jane and Bingley live nearby and the visits are frequent. Elizabeth begins to come out of her depression. Even Mrs. Bennet surprises us with her common sense advice — who knew she had it in her.

Then a mysterious letter comes from Mary Bennet who has been studying in Paris, asking Jane to come to her in Brighton. It’s mysterious because it’s not like Mary to be so uninformative and secretive. Jane, of course, asks Elizabeth to come with her. When they arrive at the Fitzwilliams’ home, Mary isn’t there. They don’t know where she is staying or how to find her. But then Mary shows up and breaks her bad news. Jane and Elizabeth, while shocked to their core, immediately offer Mary all the assistance they can and the trio sets off for Chatton, Jane’s home.

The entire family gets involved and begins to come up with a plan to save Mary’s reputation. Someone must take charge and we all know that someone will be Darcy. He’d been looking for a way to help Elizabeth get over the loss of her child and the journey they must take would be the perfect opportunity. Also, it seems from Mrs. Reynolds that there is also some unfinished business of his father’s in France. Hopefully, they can handle it and Mary’s problem at the same time.

While The Darcys & the Bingleys, took us from the marriage at the end of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to the two couples settling down and adapting to married life, The Plight of the Darcy Brothers moves us into unknown territory. Many sequels to Pride and Prejudice move us beyond the wedding, Altman manages to do so by adding additional characters and by allowing the characters to grow and change in accordance with the events that have happened to them since the wedding. Yet, she is still working with the characters that we have grown to love — she doesn’t deviate from the integrity and moral values that Austen imbued them with in her work. However, they’ve moved on–grown. Kitty and Georgiana have become friends with the result that Kitty is more calm and responsible and Georgiana is less shy. Caroline Bingley has found happiness with Dr. Maddox and lives in London.

This story, while about Mary, has Mary only as the driving force of the plot and mostly off the page. It’s Darcy and Elizabeth that take center stage. They are trying to save Mary’s reputation and, by extension, Kitty’s. They make some new friends and find some unexpected allies and family along the way.

Altman manages to move between the story lines — Darcy and Elizabeth in Europe and Bingley and Jane and the rest of the Bennets in Chatton, and Caroline and Dr. Maddox in London — deftly. As with the first book there is humor, always apt, sometimes silly but always fitting to the occasion and circumstances and, if we’re honest, resonating with our own lives. There are also some moments of extreme poignancy that actually brought tears to my eyes (even on rereading the book a second and then a third time).

Altman manages to stay true to the original characters, tell a whopping good story, make us laugh and cry in all the right places, and make us want to read it again and again. It’s that ability that makes her follow-ons to Pride and Prejudice, ones that we will impatiently await like the coming of a new season.

Tonight we watched Lady in the Water directed and written by M. Night Shyamalan and starring: Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, Bob Balaban, Sarita Choudhury, along with many others.

I really enjoyed The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but Signs just left me wondering what the point was other than to be scary. Since Lady in the Water appeared to be marketed as horror, I decided to skip it. But, it popped up on Netflix as one of those “if you liked these you might want to try this” — so I did. Boy, am I glad I did.

Basically, the story takes place in an apartment building complex. Someone is swimming in the pool at night and the building/grounds manager, Cleveland Heep, keeps hoping to catch the swimmer. However, once he does, the swimmer submerges and doesn’t come up. He starts to run around the pool and slips and knocks himself out and falls into the pool. He comes to, to find the swimmer has carried him into his apartment — essentially saving his life. However, the swimmer is not who or what she seems. For the lady in the water is a narf named Story. It’s up the Heep to help her achieve her goal and to return to her world.

The entire movie is a story in a story in a story. The folk tale of the water people and the land people drives the film framing the entire narrative. But Heep must learn the story since Story can’t tell him anything about her world — it’s against the rules (as telling useful information so often is in these types of folk tales).

Most of us grew up listening to and then reading fairy tales and legends ourselves. Many of those stories teach morals or behaviors or lessons, a carry over from our oral traditions of years gone by. But the stories that resonant with us and that we remember vividly are those that touch our hearts. In Lady in the Water, Heep calls together a varied group that are touched by this story and want to believe. The film touches that part of us that wants to believe in good triumphing over evil, or at least breaking even. That each person can find their purpose and accept the responsibility of stepping up to be the person they were always meant to be.

We can’t all be princes or princesses in disguise and that wasn’t the point of those tales of orphans finding out they were special. It’s that each of us is special and not in the way we seem to have now, of everybody being special so that no one is. No, everyone is special, but were not all equally gifted — someone may be a gifted dancer and the rest of us can barely walk and talk at the same time without falling over. That’s doesn’t make us klutzy ones less, it just means that physical coordination is not our gift. Everyone, no matter how common and ordinary, has a purpose in life. Some of us might find that purpose and some of us may never make the effort to examine our own skills and abilities to find that uniqueness that makes us special.

In Lady in the Water, a group of ordinary people come together to help someone. They are told that only they can help, and that they have a role to play in saving Story. They may not totally believe in her story but they are willing to help. Nevertheless, they take a stand to help someone in need. A person they don’t know in a situation that is frankly unbelievable.

Should the human race be saved? Some days when I watch the news I wonder if maybe we should just give the Earth a break. On other days, I can see the spark that makes humanity definitely worth saving. It seems that crises and upheaval bring us together to help others in a way that peace and prosperity don’t.

Lady in the Water makes a clear case for the inherent goodness within the heart of man. It’s a movie that definitely will be bought and added to our watch many more times collection. I hope, if you haven’t seen it yet you’ll give it a try.

I’m probably one of the last people to get to see Hancock. We watched it as a play now on Netflix. I can’t comment on the clarity of the sound or the picture — remember Netflix insists that you use IE to watch their movies and there’s very little control on the viewer’s side (personally, I think Netflix should take a look at Hulu with their use any browser, clear sound, crisp pictures — I can even read the credits; can’t on Netflix — and sometimes closed captioning.

Anyway, I’d seen clips and it looked like it would be fun. Hancock stars Will Smith, Jason Bateman, Charlize Theron, Eddie Fernandez, and Johnny Galecki among others. Never could resist a Will Smith film and this was worth watching. Basically, Hancock (Smith) is a superhero who is, in all honesty, a jerk. He’s a drunk with anger management issues and he gets the job done but with no care what so ever about collateral damage as long as the bad guys get caught. Along comes Ray (Bateman) a PR guy who wants to make the world a better place, and convinces Hancock that he doesn’t need to be a jerk — he can be loved and respected and sets out to change him. Mary (Theron), Ray’s wife, thinks Hancock may be a lost cause.

That’s the bare bones, no spoilers, outline. Berg manages to have a goodly number of twist on this tale and things are not as the audience originally thought. Hancock is rude, sloppy, crude, and a drunk with tremendous power. He does his job but everyone hates him and he doesn’t fit in — he’s alone. One of a kind. He hasn’t got any connection to the people he’s helping. He has no memory of who he is or how he got to be the way he is. Can he change his attitude and become a better person?  Ray thinks he can.

On one level this is a film about connections and belonging. Hancock can see those connections but he doesn’t feel them and Ray makes him believe that maybe he could be different. Of course that doesn’t mean he’s going to change overnight. There are some truly funny moments in the film.

There’s also an undercurrent of “what are you willing to do for love”? Most of us think that we’d do anything for the people we love, but would we? Would we give them up and walk away if it meant their happiness? What we really mean is that we’d do anything to be with the ones we love — but if keeping them safe and healthy meant stepping away — that’s where most of us would have to really examine just how deep our love goes. Hancock wants to find a place for himself. He wants to understand who he is and where he comes from. He wants to be more than he is — a superhero with attitude. Once he comes to learn more about himself, he has to make some hard choices and decide who he really is.

Somehow, this superhero, comic summer film has a lot more meat on it that was expected. But it’s still plain good fun. You don’t have to appreciate that there’s more to it than the surface explosions and action sequences. It works on several levels. Some of the scenes that I was looking forward to from the clips turned out to be in the film as YouTube videos and not really all that easy to see (at least in the resolution of NetFlix via IE — but that’s the medium. Guess we might buy the DVD afterall — someday when it shows up in the sale bin.

Lavishly and lovingly illustrated with characters and other bits from the operas of Gibert & Sullivan, the story centers on the argument that these two great men had over artistic differences. Sullivan wanted to write a great opera and Gilbert wanted to entertain. This breach in their partnership caused the two men to stop speaking to each other.

Gilbert, knowing that Sullivan’s main complaint was that no matter what the opera was about the basic story was the same, had an idea for something really different. Japan and all things Japanese was really popular and he set about to write the story and words for an opera that would be very different. When Gilbert presented his new idea to Sullivan he was excited by the new story line — while the humor and comedy remain intact and it isn’t a serious opera the two patched up their differences.

Here’s a clip of “Three Little Maids Are We” from the Mikado:

While the Japanese influence filtered through a Victorian filter is definitely something different for the time, it’s really not that different from, say The Pirates of Penzance, “I Am the Very Model Of A Modern Major General”:

So, while the story was very different and had no magical spells or castles — the witty use of words and comedy remained the same. So, their argument this time was solved without a winner or a loser. While both men were very talented, they never could quite seem to make it on their own, but together they made opera a very English experience and it was Gilbert & Sullivan who paved the way for the modern musical.

What this books does is let children, young adults (and dare I say adults) realize that sometimes feuds and arguments are not bad things. Sometimes arguments are a way of clearing the air, of making the participants in the argument aware of the need to do things differently, to find another way. This wasn’t the only feud or argument that Gilbert & Sullivan had in their long career but many of the others were eventually solved by looking at the problem and finding a solution that they could both live with.

So, if you have a disagreement, calm down and take a close look at the item/idea/situation that the disagreement is about. Can something be done? Think long and hard about alternatives. Because the Mikado turned out to be one of their most famous operas. Maybe if they hadn’t had that disagreement they would never have changed the way they told stories to music and their names might not be as well known as they are now.

Feel free to share your opinions about this book or Gilbert & Sullivan. I love to hear what other people think.