Comments on: Jane Austen’s New BFs? Cornel West and Fran Lebowitz? I Think Not!

By: Karen

Karen — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:01:35 +0000

Lynne

I went to see it and i couldn�t agree with you more. ANYthing would have been better than that film.

The exhibit itself was really fabulous — I wonder whether the necessity of writing so small to save paper didn�t give her a better concept of the structure of the entirety?

By: Dave Newton

Dave Newton — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 18:19:58 +0000

This feature in today’s NYTimes might shed a bit more light on why Cornel West was asked to comment on Jane Austen. To wit: The curators were, in the words of a supermarket boss ad client I once served, hitting the staff a hot grounder. (Baseball expression.) Tweaking the traditionalists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/nyregion/24routine.html?scp=2&sq=cornel%20west&st=cse

Note from The Wicked Witch of Publishing(TM): I don’t know, Dave, I listened again to the full interview and still feel West was out of his element, knew it, and was covering up by sounding erudite, if not knowledgeable .

By: Peter L. Winkler

Peter L. Winkler — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 22:12:30 +0000

Neither West nor Leibowitz present themselves as final authorities on Austen, which is different than being presumably educated individuals who are familiar with her work who obliged an invitation to provide their opinions of her work. So big deal. I’m not familiar with West’s writing, so I won’t dismiss him out of hand. I’m a fan of Fran Liebowitz, who is a witty curmudgeon. She gives very entertaining extemporneous interviews, as she did a couple of times for Vanity Fair magazine in the last few years. She comes off poorly in this interview, that I’ll grant you, but she shouldn’t be judged solely by one bad performance.

I notice hat no one commenting here seems to have watched any of the other video commentaries, which may be no better than West’s or Liebowitz’s.

By: Lynne

Lynne — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:44:52 +0000

“Emma” returns to television on Sunday in a new BBC mini-series on PBS. Romola Garai (“Atonement”) stars as Emma Woodhouse. Alessandra Stanley, TV critic, for The New York Times, gives this version of “Emma” excellent reviews.

Sunday, January 24, 2010.

By: Vivian

Vivian — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:29:47 +0000

The Austen blog people sound like they should thank you for letting them know about the exhibit at the Morgan Library since they hightailed it to NYC the day after receiving your email about your posting. Instead, of saying “thank you,” they make snotty comments about you.

By: Maralyn Rittenour

Maralyn Rittenour — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:58:12 +0000

Mr. Adler’s comment is brilliant! Time to see “The War of the Roses” again on Netflix.

By: Vivian

Vivian — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:29:34 +0000

Gosh, some of the comments here are quite vitriolic….and one was quite nasty about the Wicked Witch herself. I guess being a blogger requires a thick skin, and a sense of humor.

By: Warren Adler

Warren Adler — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:10:07 +0000

I suspect that the idiots at the Morgan Library imagined that they were being �relevant� by choosing two people from the bullpen of the politically correct to achieve whatever illusive goal they had concocted. Perhaps their next project will feature Osama Bin Laden and Mel Gibson as they discourse on the Old Testament to promote the library�s magnificent collection of Bibles.

Note from The Wicked Witch of Publishing(TM): Warren Adler is a world-renowned novelist, short story writer and playwright. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages and two of his novels, The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, have been made into enormously popular movies, shown continually throughout the world.

By: Maralyn Rittenour

Maralyn Rittenour — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:00:38 +0000

Lynne, an excellent critique as always. It whetted my appetite though I was planning to visit anyway, in fact I originally invited you as my free guest.

Enough has been written about the controversial documentary, so I will only comment on Jane herself.

My parents lived near the former Austen home in Hampshire and I have my mother’s complete works of JA, should you ever wish to borrow any of her novels rather than reading them on your Kindle.

Ariel Levy described JA as a writer of romantic comedy in a recent issue of the New Yorker. While that may be true, I’m one of those fans who believe that she is all about money; inheriting it, marrying into it, but in an un-crass way – no self-made millionaires in the Regency era – fortunes mostly derived from land-owning. Nevertheless the pursuit of wealth, its comforts and security, render her writings quite topical today.

By: Lynne

Lynne — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:44:34 +0000

From AustenBlog in response to my sending notification that I had blogged about their heroine and my visit to The Morgan.

We paid a visit to the Morgan Library last weekend to see the current exhibition, �A Woman�s Wit: Jane Austen�s Life and Legacy.�

The day before our trip, we received an e-mail from an individual rejoicing in the self-imposed title The Publishing Contrarian containing a link to her own report on the exhibit, which e-mail, since we invite correspondence and links, we hesitate to characterize as spam, but apparently we were one of a large pool of recipients, one of whom complained about receiving the e-mail in the comments to the post linked, so: we report, you decide. We were not sure if we wished to notice this commentary, but since it was thrust upon our notice, we found we have some things to say in response. This individual took offense to the film, or at least to a couple of the Austen enthusiasts featured in it, to wit: Fran Lebowitz and Cornel West.