3/29/00 Laurie - [l_mease@hotmail.com] semantics

Dear Voices,

Just a quick question - is the Northanger of Northanger Abbey pronounced with a hard g (like when something is "hanging" in a closet) or with a soft g that sounds like a j (like gelatin)? I've heard it pronounced both ways and just wondered which was correct.

From the Meister: The only thing I can tell
you is that the folks at BBC pronounce it with
the hard "g" as in "anger". So, that is the way
I always say it.

3/29/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] North Hanger Abbey

Dear Laurie,

My guess is the hard 'g':  I imagine the title originally referred to the abbey in or near the north wood ('hanger' being an old term for 'wood' or 'forest').  The 'h' is silent, of course, as in American (but not Australian) 'herb'.
Julie

3/30/00 Cheryl - more "American" talk

Dear Julie,

Of course you realize that, here in America, "suspenders" are what firemen wear to keep their pants up, not what ladies wear to keep their fishnet stockings up.  A particularly caution - a man may refer to himself as "a belt and suspenders man." Though I admit I sometimes have a mental picture of the Chippendales meet The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Cheryl

3/28/00 Ray Mitchell - [grm34@mailcity.com] Wanted: Younger Libertine

Dear Folks,

I’m not sure exactly what I was accused of because the comment has been removed, but I think the charge was that I was "comfortable with current culture". Nothing could be further from the truth. Popular culture (or what passed for culture) gives me the creeps. I have not been to a movie in over a year and I have no idea who all those folks are in People magazine. No one in his or her right mind can listen to a commercial radio station. All music since Benny Goodman laid down his clarinet is an abomination and if it were not for books and classical music, there would be no acceptable culture left. So, like anyone with any sense, I live in the past culture-wise.

This whole misunderstanding seems to arise from the fact that in every group or on every board, SOMEBODY has to be the libertine. Due to lack of competition, I have assumed the job. It is, I will admit, a bit of a stretch (and just a little unseemly) to have a man who is old enough to be Mr. Bennet’s father, acting as the libertine, but hey, there does not seem to be anybody else.

I would like nothing better than to play my age, pointing with alarm at all kind of things. Darcy-like, I could go through life viewing with disgust the actions of others. That’s what old people do.

Perhaps if the Jane Austen community could be surveyed, there might be a more suitable libertine who could take my place and let me play my age. We need someone in his or her twenties. However, it will not be an easy task to find such a person. As some wise man once said, "There is a time to be born and a time to die; there is a time to be middle-aged and read Jane Austen." So, a suitably aged libertine might not be easy to find. I will, of course, continue to offer my services if no more suitable replacement can be found.

3/28/00 The Meister - Why were none of us informed?

Dear Ray,

You seem to be canvassing for a new libertine, but I am not aware of any community-wide sentiment for a change. To check my understanding, I instructed Elections and Advertisements to conduct a poll. They inform me that the results are

Retain Ray: 5,279
Bring in a Whipper-snapper: 3

We are not even certain of the 3 negative votes because one of those ballots was almost unreadably - it looked smeared in chicken blood and goat's milk. Actually, Legal has just informed me that the poll is moot because there is absolutely no legal basis for abdication. (It seems to me that you people were told that once before.) I am sorry Ray, but the position of Male-Voices Libertine is a bit like that of a Supreme Court Justice; you will be writing briefs for the rest of your life. Think of it as a punishment. Or, better yet, as the price you must pay for the privilege of writing the title M.V.L. after your name.

3/28/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] Libertines

Dear Ray,

Now, for all you know I could be typing this while arrayed in a feather boa and black suspenders - though it would tend to frighten the goats.

Do you really dislike the world in which we live, though?  I don't use the term 'popular culture', because I don't think it means much, but I LIKE our world - parts of it.  There are plenty of parts to hate, of course, but that has always been the case, through space and time. Jane Austen was the same:  there were a great many parts of her world that she must have hated, but it didn't stop her from liking the good bits:  and from bequeathing, to us, joy, as she wrote about what she loved - the countryside, the seasons, and the observation of people (I do not mean to imply, however, that she was a people lover, because I think she was too acute for that).  I wonder whether she felt, as I do, that to take one's gifts and privileges for granted, to dwell on the black and the negative in life, is to display arrogance, and to give insult, to that majority of the people on earth who will still find life nasty, brutish and short?

Anyway, up the libertines!  I say.

I'd best go and get changed into something less comfortable.
Julie

3/30/00 Cheryl - random thoughts on Lady Catherine and nude beaches

Dear Ray,

I think you wrong Lady Catherine by putting her at the head of your delegation of moralists ... she would be perfectly satisfied knowing that the world was truly going to hell in a handbasket, just like she said it always would.

Your unreasonable dislike for Darcy is showing again.  Neither Darcy nor Elizabeth would be there because they can go around naked all they want at home. Such eccentric behavior was expected of men of Darcy's rank (and there are practical reasons for giving all of the servants the same day off, if you know what I mean.)  Darcy probably has a primitive hot tub somewhere around Pemberley where he and Elizabeth laze about and do all sorts of unseemly things -- when they can send Georgiana off to relatives for a few days.

It occurs to me that there must be any number of porn movies out there titled "Pride and ..." The dirty alliterative possibilities being almost endless.  "Sense and Sensuality" was taken years ago by the eccentric rock band the Au Pairs, a group fronted by a bass playing Helen Mirren look-alike singing wickedly funny songs about sex.  Who says there's been no good music since Benny Goodman?
Cheryl

3/23/00 Cheryl Hoffman - [ramcah@televar.com] Humbly submitted bad poetry

With apologies to everyone except those, like myself, who delight in doggerel, I humbly submit the poem  "Replacing Anne; Thoughts on a worn-out book."  For full comic effect, this poem should be read aloud in an exaggerated conversational tone.

It's been many months since I first knew,
A year or more.
I was angry and muttered about cheap binding
But the tuxedoed bird mocked me, and the November wind whispered, "Penguin paperback editions are the best made in the industry!"

For many weeks I walked as if on eggshells
Fearful to disturb.
I would close my eyes tight and painfully against the brilliance
Of Sir Walter's soul laid bare in a lightening stroke,
And begin reading only at the introduction of the beloved Crofts.

But even here, at top and bottom, could be seen
The separation
Of page from glue.  As glaring and unwelcome as any Aunt Norris.
And throughout the summer a bit of brother Henry was lost here and there,
But I rationalized, that, saccharine and poorly written, it was no loss at all.

Though I often scrambled after loose pages on the floor.
A certain knowledge that the end was near left me free again,
And I dared delight in the Baronetage for occupation in my idle hours.
And though the front cover succumbed soon after,
I scorned the indignity of a rubber band.

This summer I think I'll take Anne to search for agates
On a Pacific beach
While the tide comes in (no flat shore here to tame the waves.)
And dine on fresh Dungeness crab and razor clams
Then to the city for a play and some shopping.

I'll piss and moan about the price of books these days.
But I'll come home with a bright, fresh copy of Persuasion.
And feel the child-like delight in its crisp pages and think it "nice."

But it won't open itself to my favorite scene.
No directions to a Yellowstone Ranger's secret fishing spot mar the title page,
No careless spills from a thousand dinners or petals from an antique rose
Found growing near a ruined shack in Colorado will interrupt the story.
No glorious imperfections nearly as evocative as the words themselves.

A hard-lived life of service has its own special honor,
Even a book's,
And this Persuasion will rest on my shelves a few more years.
The words themselves are replaced at very little effort and expense
And will outlast me by centuries, so I hope to be forgiven the sentimentality
That makes me cling to my own memories interwoven with Anne's story,
Though my history written in the mundane language
Of wear and tear on a much loved book.

3/23/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] A kindred soul

Dear Cheryl,

A kindred soul.

I've just run a quick check of my bookshelves, and stacks of books, and corners full of books, etc, and I've come up with seven copies of Emma (some held in place by rubber bands, three without their covers, one in mint condition which doesn't seem to like me very much), four of Pride and Prejudice, six of Mansfield Park, ten (TEN!) of Persuasion ... and that's where I ran out of time. The Penguin editions seem to like me most of all, the Folio Society set seems the most unfriendly.

What happens is that, should I find a copy of Jane Austen or some other delight languishing at a second hand bookstall, I feel compelled to buy it, to give it a good home - can't bear to see these treasures sitting like abandoned puppies, unwanted, unloved ... Which means, of course, that the year after they have been set for secondary school study, I must be kept away from bookstalls altogether.

MUST remember to keep taking those little green pills!
Julie

3/24/00 Ashton - I wonder, wonder, wonder, wonder WHO (hmph!) who wrote the book of lo-ove?

So, Ray, who is sexier, Elizabeth Bennet or Lady Chatterley? I may not be the only one who chooses Miss Elizabeth; I say that because I remember you told us, when you came back from England, that the director's instructions to Jennifer Ehle were to play Elizabeth Bennet as if she were good in bed. But how did the director know that? How do I know that? Somehow Jane Austen communicates that to us.

I think that Jane Austen would have enjoyed a nude beach very much. That kind of place must be so absurd that she would have taken it in with delight. Almost certainly our Lady would have found a latter-day Mr. Collins or Sir Walter there. The thing that strikes me is that nudity on a beach must be uncomfortable and I am not thinking of modesty. I mean would anyone in his/her right mind want to go nude even alone at home? Think of what you are doing to the furniture! I would not want a guest to go nude like that - umm, not unless it was absolutely necessary. And, of course, anyone on a nude beach must pretend that they are not exhibiting - "how dare you ogle me!" - the experience must be hilarious as often as it is stimulating.

Oh, and speaking of nudity, Frances O'Conner puts her bare breasts on display in the recent Masterpiece Theater version of Madame Bovary. Superb! - no, not the production. This actress has a beautiful, dramatic figure, but how is it that the same actress that can portray such a voluptuous Madame Bovary was also seen right to be cast as Fanny Price?

3/27/00 Ray Mitchell - [grm34@mailcity.com] The sadder but wiser girl is the girl for me

Dear Folks,

It pains me to admit it, but I’m afraid I will have to score one for Ash. His insight into who might be on the nude beach with me was right on. Sir Walter and Mr. Collins would, much to my discomfort, probably be there.

However, I do not believe our Lady would come to the aforesaid beach herself. I would expect that she would send such towers of rectitude as Lady Catherine De Bourgh, Mrs. Norris, and Edmund Bertram. All three would come marching down the beach, each determined to put us in our proper place (guilt ridden).

But wait, there are others here on the beach: John Thorpe, Tom Bertram, Captain Price, Frank Churchill, Maria Bertram Rushworth. Marianne Dashwood (looking for Willoughby), Willoughby (good guess, Marianne!), Lydia Wickham, (Wickham himself is off in India with his regiment and Lydia is looking for little fun), Miss Bates (she is lost but does not seem to mind), Mary Bennet (on a back to nature-fresh air kick) and last but certainly not least, our stars, Henry and Mary Crawford. There might be a few other characters from other author’s scattered around, including Tess, who at long last has fallen in with the right crowd.

Lady Catherine, being the spokesperson for those who spend their lives passing judgement on those of us who might be having a good time, sniffs up half the air on the beach and launches into a tirade, heavenly laden with terms like "absurd", "uncomfortable", "right mind", "exhibiting" and "ogle". Some of us are sinking deep into a guilty depression when Mary Crawford stands up, turns around and moons Lady C. Then Mary says to those of us on the beach, "Listen, there’s more of us than there are of them. Let’s run them off."

As indeed we do, sending them scurrying down the beach. As they were fleeing, I noticed that Edmund kept looking back at Tess, or maybe it was Mary Crawford he was ogling.

Later, while we were still on the beach, John Thorpe of all people, said something that will always stay with me, "Ain’t it wonderful," he said, "that our Lady created so many more of us than of them?"

So, rectitude took a beating and I say it’s about time.

Darcy had wanted to go with the gloom and doom crew led by Lady C. but he had a previous commitment to go pass judgement on a dance where unsuitable people were said to be having fun.

When Darcy heard of the incident on the beach he said, "We can not have any of those people here. What about the furniture?" Then he barred me and all of my new friends from Pemberly for LIFE!

Ash, one more thing: I will take Lady Chatterley. You can have Elizabeth and all of her potential. I’ll have a sure thing  a woman who will lounge around all afternoon in my hut and let me weave flowers in her you know what. Would Elizabeth do that ??? She is going to be too busy running Pemberly to allow time for anything so foolish and wonderful.

So, take her and welcome.

3/25/00 Ashton - The identity of Jane Austen's true "father"

Dear Cheryl,

I very much like most of what you have been saying lately (the few exceptions are your comments about slugs, flies, and gender differences). Actually, your posting reminds me to explain what I have been thinking about lately.

I will start with a quote from C. S. Lewis:

"[Jane Austen] is described by someone in Kipling's worst story as the mother of Henry James. I feel much more sure that she is the daughter of Dr. Johnson: she inherits his common sense, his morality, even much of his style. ..."

And, we might add, Johnson's ironic sense of humor. In contrast, our Lady's oldest brother, James Austen said this about his sister:

"On such subjects no wonder that she shou'd write well,
In whom so united those Qualities dwell;
Where 'dear Sensibility', Sterne's darling Maid,
With Sense so attemper'd is finely portray'd
Fair Elinor's self in that Mind is exprest,
And the Feelings of Marianne live in that Breast,
Oh then, gentle Lady! continue to write,
And the sense of your Readers t'amuse & delight."

So, who is the true literary "father"? Johnson or Sterne? These are two very different men, so the question is an interesting one. It is Sterne who would have written about being, as you say, "... thrilled to the merest brush of another's hand ..." I want to find out the intellectual parentage of our Lady, and I suspect that it was Sterne who is the true "father", although his apparent lack of order and chronology might seem, at first, to rule him out. Right now, I am betting that Brother James is the more astute here, even though I thought that Lewis had it right until just recently. I am beginning with Boswell's biography of Johnson - OK, OK, so I am reading an abridged edition.

3/28/00 Cheryl - Parentage???

Dear Ashton,

Why is it when we look at the work of, say, Albert Einstein, we're overwhelmed by the genius that allowed him to bring together a thousand (seemingly) barely connected elements into a cogent, completely new whole, but when we look at Jane Austen, we check around to see who the credit really belongs to?

I know that's not how you meant it, but as you might guess, I find the idea of crediting the "father" of Jane Austen ever-so-slightly annoying.  Everything I've read so far tells me that when Pride and Prejudice was published, it was an entirely new form of the novel.  We can talk about the influence of experience and education on a mind capable of synthesizing an entirely new art form, but can we really talk about parentage?

Elizabeth Jenkins warns the reader against trying to connect a character in the novels with this or that person in Jane Austen's real life and I think we should also hesitate before identifying  a characteristic of the novels with that of another writer.

P.S. I stand corrected:  Edmund Bertram is not a "slug" he is a young man of steady and earnest character.
Cheryl

3/28/00 Ashton - First of all, the confusion about Einstein

Dear Cheryl,

Your comment about Einstein is not very accurate. If I can clear that up for you then perhaps we can also reach some agreement about Jane Austen. Einstein was an excellent scholar as well as a creative genius. I mean he was a loner but he was acutely aware of the goings on in his field because he was so well read. A great source of unrest in physics at the beginning of this century was the fact the basic equations describing the movement of light ("Maxwell's electro-magnetic equations") seemed to be in error - were counter-intuitive. So, a couple of scientists in California did the experiment and confirmed the worst fears - the equations were right and everyone's intuition was wrong. Gulp! Most thought, "well - California right? - the experiment is probably wrong!" (In fact, the experiment WAS wrong the first time.) Einstein realized the experiment was right and then wrote a paper to prove it. In a footnote, in an appendix (you can tell it was an after-thought), he noticed that an implication was that E = mc². Could Hiroshima be far behind?

In that same year, he also published an interesting paper on atomic physics. In that case, he had been following the results of experiments on "black-body radiation"; I won't describe the experiment because it would bore you silly. It suffices to say that physicists were publishing theoretical papers to explain the results based on an understanding of atoms. No one succeeded and everyone else wondered why - more ferment. Then the most renown physicist of the day, Max Planck, showed in an off-handed way that the results could be completely explained if one assumed that the energy of an atom cannot change continuously; rather the energies had to be some multiples of a single, small number - the energy levels were "quantized". Planck wrote this in a short note and advised everyone not to take it seriously, it was only his foolish, mathematical playfulness. Einstein said, "Nope", that was actually the way things were with atoms - quantum mechanics. To make his point, Einstein also used the quantum mechanics to explain the "electro-magnetic effect", the results of experiments in which light was used to knock electrons out of materials. (I don't know why physicists do experiments like that, they just do.) Everyone accepted this except, at first, Planck. For a good decade, Planck would say, "I wish that I hadn't published that damn paper because now Einstein has everyone else believing that nonsense". But, eventually, even Planck could see the wisdom of Einstein's insight and he obtained a faculty position for Albert in Berlin, the most prestigious place at the time.

The point is that the "fathers" of Einstein are Maxwell, Planck, and those experimenters in California. I can't believe that Einstein would have been offended by that statement. Incidentally, there is far more ferment in physics today then there was in Einstein's time.

3/30/00 Cheryl - "I am not convinced..."

Dear Ashton,

With respect, I disagree with your assessment of history.  There was lots and lots going on in theoretical and experimental physics at the time, and plenty of brilliant physicists theorizing all over the place, but it took a peculiar mindset to put it all together.  The danger of "A Clear Explanation Anyone Can Understand" is that it makes it all seem so simple ... at least until one (I at any rate) realizes that one couldn't even learn the maths, let alone apply them in any way.  I think  James Burkes' "The Day The Universe Changed" does an excellent job of showing how truly disparate the pieces of the puzzle were.

At any rate, do you disagree with the basic premise that women's achievements are more likely to need some sort of "explanation"? (Hey, if Ray can shoot for "most controversial," so can I.) I don't think Jane Austen was trying to copy anyone else. And I think she was equally well read -- in the field necessary to her work -- as Einstein.   Sure, I think we can look at the writers who provided her with the tools she needed to realize her particular genius, but we don't say a piano maker is the "father of Beethoven", do we?

Everything I've read tells me that Pride and Prejudice was an entirely new form of the novel. If creating such a paradigm shift were as straightforward in real life as it appears with 20/20 hindsight, we'd all be Albert Einsteins or Jane Austens or Bill Gates.  And then we could afford to buy our own beaches and decide who gets to wear clothes and who doesn't.
Cheryl

3/30/00 Ashton - Have you gone stark raving mad?

Dear Cheryl,

Bill Gates? BILL GATES!! Bill Gates never invented anything in his life; he is a ruthless, monopolist businessman. He manages an organization of thieves - excuse me - an organization of highly trained individuals who "reverse engineer". There isn't one thing that Microsoft produces that wasn't done first (and better) by some poor soul who was unfairly forced out of the marketplace.

Read something by Fanny Burney and something by Maria Edgeworth and then come back here and explain why Pride and Prejudice was an "entirely new form". Jane Austen read both these authors and admired them. The beauty of this assignment is that both were women so you cannot insinuate something about me. Do you really imagine that you admire Jane Austen more than I do?

Incidentally, Julie takes your view I think and here is a link to that.

I have read the history of physics, but I was able to read Einstein's papers as well because, contrary to the popular mythology, his mathematical skills were quite normal for a Ph.D. in physics. His achievement in special relativity (the one I described) was "in the air". By that, I mean that many people were interested in the problems presented by the experiments I mentioned. In fact, it is generally understood that the basis of special relativity was anticipated by an Irish physicist of whom you have never heard. Einstein presented the more cogent arguments and, of course, it was he who drew out the conclusion that E = mc². For those reasons, special relativity is associated with Einstein's name. Now general relativity is another story and it is there that Einstein's creative imagination was best shown because, in that case, the experiments came after the theory.

It is silly to imagine that someone does not have important influences. That is nothing like saying that "someone else deserves the credit". Newton said that he saw so far because he stood on the shoulders of giants. If you are not very, very careful, I will explain what he meant - that's a warning.

Newton was a man.

Your inclusion of Gates on the same short list with Jane Austen and Einstein completely overshadows Ray's paltry attempt at "most controversial".