Put down the knife, Ms. Oates, or we will cut YOU
Joyce Carol Oates, apparently no friend of Jane herself, thinks Jane Austen’s novels can be cut. Say what?
And let’s say Jane Austen: too many descriptions of furniture and balls and ballroom gowns.
Um…the only gowns we can remember being described are Henry Tilney describing Catherine Morland’s for her “journal entry,” and that was Henry-piffle and therefore Sacred Writ. Cut it at your peril, madam. The other is Fanny Price’s white gown with glossy spots, which Edmund thinks is like one of Mary Crawford’s, and therefore more in the way of characterization than of fashion. As to furniture, the only descriptions we can think of are of the faux-Gothic pieces in Northanger Abbey, and again therefore important to the story, and the description of the Musgrove sisters introducing extra pieces into their parents’ old-fashioned parlor, and again therefore a piece of characterization. As to balls, dancing is one of the few ways that men and women could be together for a bit in Jane Austen’s world.
Seriously, we are extremely disappointed at Ms. Oates’ statement, as it seems to us to be ill-advised and sloppy and we think her capable of much better.
Thanks to Alert Janeites Tony A., Karen L., and Julie T. for sending us the link.
ETA: Check out an update here.
May 21st, 2007 at 2:25 am
But– but–
I’ve always wished that Jane had described more clothes, the way that Margaret Mitchell did; now, SHE could go on for pages about petticoats. Jane? Just the two that you mentioned, that I remember, and little things like “he wears a blue coat” or so-and-so took special care with her appearance that evening. There is nothing to cut! Maybe we could leave out the wit and satire? Nobody seems to notice those, anyways.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:41 am
I don’t think she described clothing any more than she absolutely had to. In one of her letters, she tells Cassandra about her fashionable mamalone cap, saying: “I hate describing such things, and I dare say you will be able to guess what it is like.”
May 21st, 2007 at 9:23 am
But she also said “There’s much too much smoking, drinking, fishing and hunting in Hemingway.” Seems to me that she is just reading the wrong books. Actually, it seems to me that most of the authors who made recommendations were just choosing books they did not enjoy reading. Like Jonathan Franzen, I don’t know what books I would have cut down. Yes, some books are quite long. Some would be cut down to one page just because they were so poorly written. But you don’t see people going around and saying, “That movie is too long for the mass public. Let’s cut out all the establishing shots and pans of the landscape. Just action.” That doesn’t make a movie any better. Generally speaking, people don’t want to spend any more time reading than they have to. I’m sure that Ms. Oates has her (real) reasons for wanting to cut Austen, but I just don’t think she really “know[s] a thing or two about the judicious use of words.”
May 21st, 2007 at 11:17 am
Ms Oates was possibly merely trying to attract attention by dropping the name of Jane Austen. Big mistake, though. She’s lucky she did not say anything worse that she already did.
Hey, more men than ladies! Is this a first? Lizzy would have loved it.
May 21st, 2007 at 4:48 pm
The long and the short of Ms Oates’ statement is that she has never read an Austen novel. At the very best, she has tried to read Trollope — and now thinks she knows everything about “Victorian” literature.
Every time you think that it can’t possibly get worse…
May 21st, 2007 at 7:01 pm
Yes, Pia. And Ms Oates is also extremely prolific, to the extent that some persons we know consider her to be a bit “superficial”. She clearly has never read Austen!
May 21st, 2007 at 9:50 pm
“Generally speaking, people don’t want to spend any more time reading than they have to.”
That may generally be true, but they are not people I would like! My reading material, like my cross stitch collection, has been beyond SABLE level for years.
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:55 am
Well at least she suggested we could cut some of her work. It’s obvious that JCO confuses Jane’s imitators with Jane herself, or with Georgette Heyer, who does succumb to a great deal of description.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Right, Pia and Catherine. Bet she’s only watched them on tv.
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Or maybe she’s just read Barbara Cartland, and imagines JA regency novels are similar to hers!!!!
Or maybe she wants to say Barbara Cartland, but decides to say Jane Austen, because well, she knows all about her. She knows who Colin Firth is
May 25th, 2007 at 8:05 am
In today’s New York Times — where can we send flowers?
To the Editor:
As summer reading lists beckon, surely The Times owes its younger readers better than Joyce Carol Oates’s dismissal of Jane Austen’s alleged “too many descriptions of furniture and balls and ballroom gowns.”
Austen’s fans admire her economy of description of physical objects; any first-year English student has learned that Austen uses things only when necessary for characterization.
I hope that this will encourage your readers, who lack demanding publication schedules of their own, to use the summer to actually look into a Jane Austen novel.
Kate Ward
Chicago, May 21, 2007
May 25th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Wasn’t this meant ironically? I mean, maybe Oates is a Janeite and knows there were very few such descriptions in her novels, and was certain we’d all get the joke?
May 25th, 2007 at 11:26 am
It certainly didn’t read that way to me. I had the same reaction as Ms. Ward, that perhaps it would best for JCO to reread Austen.