As Alert Janeite Lisa wrote when she sent us the link, Jane is “in the middle, next to Barak Obama, below Saddam Hussein Osama bin Laden and kitty corner from Jesus.” Front and center, Gentle Readers! Represent!

Unfortunately it’s another save-Jane-from-the-Janeites article.

It might seem all to the good that Austen is now one of those writers held up as a model by such nostalgics as Tom Wolfe: a novelist for everyone, dishing up literary intricacy and complexity for the scholars, a corking good read for the groundlings and a rebuke for the snobs. But it’s time to rescue Austen from her fans, lest the most adventurous and discerning readers pass her by. If you look at her books closely, you find them more bleak than charming: her characters are isolated within their own minds, trapped in tight spaces, forced to socialize daily with a small group of people they can never fully trust, including their own families. Not a one of her heroines ever shares everything with a true confidant—that is, up until the marriage we never see—and everybody has secrets and conflicting agendas. Courtship is deadly serious business: fail to find the right husband and you end up poor, or married to someone you can’t stand, or cast out of this iffy Eden for fornication or adultery, perhaps to die.

As Karen Joy Fowler wrote, “Surely no one else’s fans have been scolded so often for so long over the wrong-headed ways they love her. Even Austen herself has been appropriated for this project. She would be so ashamed of you, her fans are told. You’d embarrass her.” There are many ways to love Jane…as we have witnessed on this blog just the past few days. If you want to play in your particular corner of the Janeite fandom, embrace it with good humor. It’s when it starts getting taken too seriously that the problems begin, and that usually happens when big money is involved: for instance, a major Hollywood film.

Austen balances out that bleakness with wisdom, with humor, with romance, and above all with a deeply satisfying sense of form, analyzed by scholars and subliminally sensed by general readers. Entertainment, advertising, professional sports, the gossip industry, electro-gaming and the tsunamis of digital information seem calculated to obliterate that bleakness, or at least drown it out with noise. Literature, by contrast, tries to find what Samuel Beckett called “a form to accommodate the mess”—the pain and disorder of life inside and outside the mind. If admirers of Beckett, or whatever exemplar of High Seriousness or harsh edginess or meta-coolness you want to name, pass up Austen because of the prevalent notion that she’s a literary fashion accessory who can be cozied up to as “Jane” … well, what? The sky won’t fall, the books will survive, but the culture will ratchet down another notch, and the best readers will never know what they’re missing.

Oh, stop it. If anyone passes up reading Jane Austen’s novels because she’s too popular, well, it’s their loss. There are plenty of us who can balance an enjoyment of the trappings of modern Janeiteism and a serious interest in her novels. Don’t blame the Jane Austen fans for the excesses of popular culture, which cannot let a good thing lie but must seize upon it and beat it into submission. However, some of the collateral stuff is FUN–some of the movies are good, some of the pastiches are good, we love our dolls and action figure and graphic novel and LOLAustens. That doesn’t take a thing away from the novels themselves.

Alert Janeites Marmee, Jane, and Marion sent us a link to an interview on NPR’s Weekend Edition with Shannon Hale, author of Austenland. Shannon talks a bit about how she came up with the idea of the book and why she wrote it.

Thirty-two-year-old Jane Hayes — the protagonist of a new novel — is one of those devotees. In her mind, no man can measure up to Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pride and Prejudice. And specifically, the Fitzwilliam played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of the book.

In Austenland, novelist Shannon Hale tells Hayes’ coming-of-age story as her character grapples with her obsession at Pembrook Park, a British resort that caters to Austen-crazed women.

Hayes sees the trip as her final indulgence of her obsession before she gives up her fantasy world permanently. But as she delves into Pembrook’s world of proper etiquette, donning corsets and empire-waist gowns, she finds herself torn — in true Austen fashion — between the Darcy-esque Mr. Nobley and the resort’s enticing gardener.

The trick for Hayes is figuring out if the targets of her affection are sincere, or just actors in a show.

It’s a nice little interview, but what surprised us was that the author talked about readers who have contacted her and want to go to Austenland. For those who have not read the book, it’s not just about dressing up and hanging out at a country estate; “Austenland” is stocked with actors who will flirt with the women. We found that last part a bit much. Getting dressed up in Regency gowns and hanging out at a country estate sounds like a fine time, especially if some of our Janeite friends (men and women) come along. But if some actor started to flirt with us–and it’s not like these women don’t know they’re actors–we would probably demand more tea and then sit there mocking them. How degrading is that? To have to pay someone to flirt with you? Is that really what people think Janeites are all about? When we go to “Jane places,” it’s to learn more about her, and when we imagine ourselves a character in a Jane Austen novel, it is because we want to better understand the motivations and actions and emotional journey of that character. We’re not hiding the DVDs in houseplants, as the protagonist of Austenland did, because we are somehow ashamed of our obsession. We’re here, we’re Janeites, get used to it!

At least, we thought so. Is it just us? (more…)

We imagine that reading the headline of this post made many of our Gentle Readers scream and cover their hands with their head, but fear not, Janeites: It’s not some crazed TV executive, but the latest book by Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels.

In The Eyre Affair,Next confronts an arch-villain who has been killing off minor characters in Dickens, then kidnaps Jane Eyre. In Next’s fifth and latest adventure, First Among Sequels, published in early July, she investigates the premature deaths of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple, Pride and Prejudice is turned into a reality show called The Bennets and she meets a fictional Thursday Next – herself from a previous Fforde book.

If anyone can pull this off brilliantly, it’s Jasper Fforde, from whom we are waiting to hear in reference to our proposal of marriage. (Bally restraining order.) If you have not read his books, do yourself a favor and read them immediately. We once described them to a friend as porn for English majors.

A.D. Players will present Pride and Prejudice at the Grace Theatre in Houston, Texas, from July 6 through August 26.

A. D. Players will conclude its 40th Anniversary Season by presenting PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, an original adaptation by James Maxwell, revised by Alan Stanford, from the classic novel of love amid class warfare by Jane Austen…

Set in 19th century England, this classic love story follows the lives of five daughters, all of age and all unmarried. Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, the only two sensible sisters, challenge the snobbery of high-class society in the quest for true love.

The small English country town is turned upside-down when a rich youth from London buys a local manor house and throws a ball for the whole neighborhood. But his aristocratic friend casts a shadow on any chance of romance with a poorer heart. Can love prevail in a society of marriage for money?

Tickets (we cannot tell how much they are from the Web site) are available online or by calling the box office at 713-526-2721.

Alert Janeite Carmen wrote to tell us that Martin Phipps, whose gorgeous score for North and South is a favorite at AustenBlog World Headquarters and who also scored Persuasion 2007, will be composing the score for the upcoming BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.