Alert Janeites Cinthia and Franka let us know that the BBC has announced the date for the first episode of Sense and Sensibility 2008: Tuesday, January 1, 2008, at 21:10 on BBC One. Happy New Year from Auntie Beeb!

Several Alert Janeites sent us this article last week and we simply haven’t had a chance to give it a thoughtful blogging before now. (Have to be careful when the A.B.M. is involved, doncha know.) The basic premise of the article is that the current obsession with Jane Austen in the publishing world–including the creation of the “chick lit” genre from the ashes of Bridget Jones, who one can argue is a “modern” Elizabeth Bennet–does not show the real complexity of the modern woman’s life in the way a television show such as Grey’s Anatomy or Desperate Housewives do. (Desperate Housewives, of course, being a true slice of real life.)

(Imagine a book called “Confessions of an Ernest Hemingway Addict” or Sal Paradise reinvented as a popular Beverly Hills high schooler. No one would dare.)

From a logical point of view (because that’s What Jane Would Do), since Hemingway’s and Kerouac’s books are copyrighted and not in the public domain like Jane Austen’s, it would be kind of illegal. But certainly updated versions of a sort are available.

Try telling someone your favorite author of all time is Kerouac, then tell someone it’s Austen. See the different reactions you’ll get,

Depends who you tell. In this day and age, blank looks are more likely than anything else. (She said cynically)

even though, for all my carping here, Austen was supremely talented.

Well, gee, thanks, we’re sure Jane is desperately grateful for your approbation.

It’s interesting that the author hits on Sex and the City to complain about heroines without real complexity. Certainly that might be said to be true about some of the characters on that show–we liked the ending of the series as much as anyone, but if Carrie Bradshaw were a Jane Austen character, she would have kicked Big to the curb the first time he lied to her–but she completely ignores Charlotte, who is probably the character on that show who is the most like a Jane Austen heroine. By the end of the show’s run, Charlotte had come to understand that the ideal marriage doesn’t necessarily mean a rich prep from the Upper East Side–he could be a guy who is untraditionally handsome, from a very different background, but who is crazy about you. Though most of Charlotte’s “changes” are on the shallow side, she still has to really change the way she thinks about life, more so than any of the other characters on the show.

But on the second page of the article, we find a nugget of truth about the author’s complaints about the the press groaning with All Those Jane Austen Books:

Why is TV kicking literature’s ass in depicting complex women? Because publishers really don’t get it. It’s tough to prove what doesn’t get published, but I’ve heard it over and over in writing workshops, from agents, in getting my own work critiqued and hearing stories from other female authors: Make your main character more likeable. Why is she such a bitch here? Why so sarcastic? Wouldn’t it help if she were less aware of her own attractiveness? Or maybe less attractive? Or maybe just, you know, nicer? Who, telling an uncomfortable truth that needs to be spoken, is nice? Or likeable? It’s the quintessential problem of the good girl, the people-pleaser, the overachiever, writ large, with sinister marketing implications to back it up: Do we have to be nice even in the literature we write for each other? Shouldn’t books be our one refuge?

Ah. We’re having a little trouble getting published–and a little trouble accepting constructive criticism. “If I put Jane Austen in the title, I’d get published!” You want to read about heroines who are “aware of their own attractiveness?” Head over to fanfiction.net and find yourself a nice little Mary Sue with flowing raven locks and indigo eyes who makes Aragorn/Legolas/Harry Potter/Mr. Darcy fall in love with her at first sight. (Speaking of Lost in Austen. Were we speaking of Lost in Austen? No? Sorry.) No one likes that sort of self-absorbed, self-satisfied person in real life, why in the world would they want to read about her?

P.S. The answer to “Who, telling an uncomfortable truth that needs to be spoken is nice? Or likeable?” would be Bennet, Elizabeth. You can thank us later.