Jane Austen sighted in the New Yorker
Alert Janeite Deborah wrote to let us know that Anthony Lane’s profile of travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor in this week’s New Yorker contains a Jane Austen reference. The article is not available online, but Deborah sent us the following tidbit:
The gist of the story is that Fermor (aged 90 or so) is about to take an overnight ferry trip somewhere and Lane offers to get him a cabin so he won’t have to sleep on deck. Fermor declines, saying that he has a bottle of wine and a copy of Persuasion, so what more could he need to pass a moonlit night in the open air? Sounds about right to me.
Sounds about right to us, too!
Also in the New Yorker, review of a new biography of the author Harper Lee (who wrote the Editrix’s favorite non-Austen book of all time) refers to Miss Lee’s one-time wish to become “the Jane Austen of the South.” We understand that the notoriously reclusive author is a Friend of Jane.
May 26th, 2006 at 1:00 am
[...] After reading our post about the new Harper Lee biography, Alert Janeite Lorraine sent a link to the 1964 interview in which Miss Lee said she wanted to be “the Jane Austen of south Alabama.” As you know, the South is still made up of thousands of tiny towns. There is a very definite social pattern in these towns that fascinates me. I think it is a rich social pattern. I would simply like to put down all I know about this because I believe that there is something universal in this little world, something decent to be said for it, and something to lament in its passing. [...]