Perhaps my problem is my model. -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 09:13:10 02/27/08 Wed
Author: j.jackson
Subject: Perhaps my problem is my model.
In reply to: Kiernan 's message, "Jane Austen and Mimesis: Mansfield Park and Narcissistic Triangles" on 08:32:16 02/27/08 Wed

See, I love Mark Twain, loved him since the first time I read "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" in the third grade. I'd read him while eating Cap'n Crunch berries; the only thing more delicious than the berries was Twain's cynicism and biting sarcasm. Now that I've gotten older, I see that perhaps Twain in fact admired Austen greatly. I provide here some relevant quotations:

Whenever I take up "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility," I feel like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel. I am quite sure I know what his sensations would be -- and his private comments. He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians went filing self-complacently along.
- "Jane Austen" manuscript. Published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1999.

Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book.
- quotes in Remembered Yesterdays, Robert Underwood Johnson

To me his prose is unreadable--like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 1/18/1909

I haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898

I think the above insults, combined with the fact that he has obviously read her books a number of times--"Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice'"--perhaps reveals a deep-seated admiration only masking itself as hatred. Sure, he wishes she had died a painful death, and, fine, he'd like to bludgeon her with her own tibia. But deep down, I think he admired what she did--and hated her for it. So, like my model, I too will continue to express my deep admiration for Jane Austen by disparaging her work.

And so, it is in Austen's _Emma_ (a book I detest more and more upon each reading) where I think she writes explicitly to me (about my love of Twain and my dislike of Austen):
"I think there is a little likeness between us."
"If not in our dispositions, there is likeness in our destiny; the destiny which bids fair to connect us with two characters so much superior to our own."

This is the first time I've ever quoted Austen in writing. Please don't tell anyone.

I must go bathe.

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Replies:

Re: Perhaps my problem is my model. -- Erin Risch, 07:36:48 03/01/08 Sat