While we’re on the subject of JASNA, there have been a couple of additions to the website that we thought our readers would find of interest.

The 2008 Student Essay Contest has been announced, and is tied into the Masterpiece Theatre broadcast of “The Complete Jane Austen.” There are categories for high school, college/university, and post-graduate students. Students need not be a member of JASNA to enter the contest, but they must have a mentor: a teacher or a parent. The essays are due by April 15, 2008. Information is available on the JASNA website. Don’t forget to check out the Jane Austen on Film section on jasna.org for information about the adaptations.

The AGM quiz from Vancouver, naturally about Emma as that was the theme of the event, is also available if you would like to test your knowledge.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a nice article on the popularity currently enjoyed by Jane Austen, featuring JASNA’s North Shore (Ohio) Region.

Jane Austen’s sarcastic, wry and pithy drawing-room dramas of curtsies and bows, pianoforte concerts, girls without dowries, meddling mothers and country dancing offer a comforting escape from the cold age of technology, said University of Cincinnati professor Barbara Britton Wenner. “E-mail does not equal missives delivered on a platter by a servant, and book clubs do not equal reading Shakespeare’s sonnets by firelight after dinner.”

And Jane isn’t chick lit. Manly Gregory Peck, who discovered her books at the age of 12, used to take all six of her novels with him on literary retreats. He said that reading Jane calmed him.

*gasp* Captain Hornblower! Oh, wouldn’t he have been an awesome Wentworth or Knightley?

We loved this story:

And lots of people read Jane. As she does before each Dec. 16, Fernberg went to Heinen’s to order a cake with which the club, whose 40 members range in age from 20 to 82, would fete their favorite author’s birthday. While Fernberg ticked off each of the novels to chronologically depict in frosting, the clerk behind the bakery counter corrected the order. “She said, “No, Emma’ came before Persuasion,’ ” said Fernberg.

*applauds*

But most of all, Jane — who celebrated the women who often were not the prettiest in the room, but the smartest — invites readers and moviegoers to imagine eventually being adored, just like Elinor Dashwood in “Sense and Sensibility,” or Elizabeth Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” said Fernberg. “All of us would like to think there is someone out there who thinks we are special.”

Awww! Congratulations to the North Shore Region for a great article! The Plain Dealer also had a sidebar about various film adaptations.

TV Scoop asks: Do we need more literary adaptations?

There was a little lull in the fashionableness (what a hideous word) of literary adaptations after Pride and Prejudice (yes, the wet shirt one), presumably because it was so well done that it was worried that anything made too quickly afterwards would be unfavourably compared with it, but now they are seriously in vogue again, thanks, for the most part, to the huge success of the soap-style working of Bleak House on BBC One. ITV recently put together a Jane Austen season (with Northanger Abbey the pick of the bunch), and the BBC will be bringing Dickens’s Oliver Twist to our screens over winter.

And here’s the problem - perhaps we just all have Austen and Dickens fatigue. Do we really need yet another version of Oliver Twist? There was a TV adaptation with Robert Lindsay as Fagin in 1999, and there’s also the black and white film, the musical and the Roman Polanski version. Even a lesser known Dickens novel, such as Hard Times or the barely-adapted (but brilliant) Dombey and Son, would be preferable. Perhaps commissioners simply need to be a bit braver, and trust that we might be interested to watch an adaptation of a novel we don’t already know inside out.

Because there is, of course, still a wealth of stunning plots, characters and themes, from the time of the Odyssey and the Iliad to the latest best-sellers, just waiting to be brought to life on the small-screen for the first time. Of course there should be room in the schedules for new works (probably more than there is currently) and I’ve no doubt that Oliver Twist will indeed be very good, but perhaps a little more thought about the books chosen to be made into costume dramas would help to keep the genre - which has served TV so well over the years - fresh and enjoyable.

Our opinion, from a Janeite point of view: we love to see new adaptations of Jane Austen’s work. But if you’re going to do it halfway, don’t bother. Spend the money. Use proper locations. Get proper costumes; yes, that means bonnets when the ladies are out of doors; it’s a cliché because they all wore them. Pay attention to historical detail in art direction and general tone. Don’t underestimate your audience and dumb down the work or “modernize” it on their behalf. Take enough time to develop the story; use multiple episodes if necessary. Hire some new blood as scriptwriters–people who are deeply familiar with and love the original work, who are willing to do the background research to bring it to life. Don’t try to squeeze the maximum amount of money and attention out of it while delivering a substandard product. Do it right, or don’t bother. We’ll be re-reading the novels in the meantime, thanks.

Alert Janeite Karen sent us a link to the UK website for The Jane Austen Book Club film, which includes a quiz to “reveal your inner Jane Austen heroine.” The film opens in the UK on November 16.

Alert Janeite Stephanie let us know that The Lively Arts History Association is holding their annual “Jane Austen Evening” on Saturday, January 19, 2008 at the Pasadena Masonic Lodge. There will be tea in the afternoon and dancing in the evening. Tickets for the tea and dance are $42 and for the dance only are $25 and are available online. There also will be preparatory dance lessons on January 5 and 12 for $10 each, payable at the door.

(An editorial aside: High Tea is not fancy. High Tea is a hot evening meal; as a British lady of our acquaintance once called it, “a knife and forker,” or a hot meal eaten at table. Afternoon Tea is a better term for the fancy tea with scones and finger sandwiches.)

Alert Janeite Julie let us know that a 2-disc “Collector’s Edition” of Pride and Prejudice 2005 will be released on November 13. We dug around the official site and found the specs. The main difference seems to be that it includes a full-frame version as well as a widescreen version of the film, both with commentary from Joe “Go Jump In A Lake” Wright, and the addition of some bonus features:

• Conversations with the Cast
• The Politics of Dating
• The Stately Homes of Pride & Prejudice
• Galleries of the 19th Century
• Pride & Prejudice Family Tree

Some of these are already available on the HD-DVD version. Missing from the original DVD is “Behind-the-Scenes at the Ball.” Probably not worth it if you already have the DVD.

Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link, annoyed at yet another eejit who thinks Jane Austen was a Victorian.

“Let’s say you’re reading Pride and Prejudice. Imagine a world where you have links to movie versions integrated into the text, so you could click and see a director’s vision of a scene. Or if you wanted to know more about Victorian culture or language, or more about Austen, the information is only a click away.”

We were annoyed, too, but for different reasons.

These are all valid observations that Siemens and his researchers are taking into consideration in developing new online reading models. Upgraded technology, such as gentler monitors and the invention of “e-book readers” will likely address some of the practical complaints, while our own expectations about the reading experience will gradually change with technological advancement.

“e-book readers” in “quotation marks”? And speaking of the invention of “e-book readers” as though they haven’t been invented yet? Oh, for a Cluebat of E-book Righteousness with which to smite the unbelievers! We read e-books on our smartphone all the time; we just had a post about reading Pride and Prejudice on a BlackBerry last week. Right now we have our beady eyes on one of these numbers; and Amazon is rumored to be putting out an “e-book reader” of their own very soon, which might make e-books incredibly popular; apparently it includes a wireless connection–a phone connection, mind you, not Wifi, though it might have that, too–for over-the-air downloads.

We don’t think e-books will ever completely replace paper books, but we think once the publishers and device manufacturers hit the sweet spot between price and convenience, they will have a place. And interactive e-books certainly will have a place, as well.