Prairie Jane
Clay Jenkinson has a lovely column in the Bismarck Tribune about the universal nature of an appreciation of Jane Austen, including his first experience with reading her as a fresh-off-the-prairies exchange student at Oxford University.
I had arrived at Oxford a couple of weeks before the fall (Michaelmas) term began, to get settled. One day I was loitering in the 17th century gateway of my college (Hertford) reading the notices put up for students of each study area. Suddenly a portly distinguished man in a wool suit jacket and a sweater vest moved toward me in a flat-footed way and said, “You must be young Jenkinson from America.” Indeed I was.
He invited me up to his rooms in the college and poured me the first glass of sherry of my life. He asked me about my special interests in English language and literature. I stammered out nervous and self-conscious answers.
Then he sat far back into an overstuffed ottoman and tilted his head up to the ceiling, cocked an eye at me, and said, “Well, Mr. Jenkinson, which Jane Austen novel do you especially fancy?”
A very long stage pause here.
Idiot that I was, I told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “Mr. Cockshut, I’m afraid I have to admit that I have never read a Jane Austen novel.”
Pause.
A.O.J. Cockshut said, “I find that I can always tell a very great deal about someone by asking that question. Good day.”
I slipped out of the room like a terrified and humiliated boy in a Dickens novel, walked straight to Blackwells bookstore, bought all six Austen novels, and read them all during the next week.
HA!
We loved how his and his daughter’s reaction to seeing TJABC was to run out and get all of Jane’s novels. Do it! Read them! We’ll be here waiting when you are finished. 
October 24th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
This was such a lovely column. I’m on the verge of breaking down (and setting aside my deep dislike of Kathy Baker) and seeing the movie.