A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter
When I was a reporter covering education it seemed we were constantly monitoring curriculum debates. And none were more intense than the battles over reading lists for English class.
Is there really any good reason, for instance, why today鈥檚 teenagers should be required to immerse themselves in the classics? Won鈥檛 a 19th-century love story send kids scurrying for the exits? Aren鈥檛 the references arcane, the social settings antique? Why not speak to kids where they are by offering them the urban, the hip, the contemporary?
And when it comes to boys, the arguments seem particularly pitched. Sure, writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront毛 could have some appeal to teenage girls. But what young male in the year 2011 is going to find anything he can relate to in an English country parsonage?
4 books I shouldn鈥檛 have liked 鈥� but did
I wish I had known William Deresiewicz in those days. His new book A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter is the perfect antidote to such arguments. Jane Austen changed his life, Deresiewicz tells us, even though he was a prototypical urban hipster who thought a wanted nothing to do with her.
Deresiewicz was a second-year Columbia University graduate student 鈥� by his own description an angry young rebel who passed his days 鈥渋n a cloud of angry sarcasm, making silent speeches鈥� as he 鈥渟talked down Broadway鈥� in a "John Lennon coat."
Eager to study modernist writers like Joyce, Conrad, Faulkner, and Nabokov, and reveling in whatever seemed 鈥渃omplex, difficult, sophisticated,鈥� Deresiewicz knew one thing for sure: He had less than zero interest in 19th-century British literature. 鈥淲hat could be duller,鈥� he asked himself, 鈥渢han a bunch of long, heavy novels, by women novelists, in stilted language, on trivial subjects?鈥�
And no author, he felt certain, could be worse than Austen. 鈥淛ust thinking about her made me sleepy.鈥�
Then he was assigned 鈥淓mma.鈥�
What Deresiewicz discovered as he delved into the novel was an author of 鈥渞evolutionary artistic choice,鈥� a writer who exercised 鈥渁 courageous defiance of convention and expectation鈥� and who employed a language 鈥渢hat rolled along as easily as breathing.鈥�
In short, he was hooked. He writes: 鈥淚 met the woman who would change my life.鈥�
Deresiewicz鈥檚 breezy but solid 250-plus page book takes us through all six of Austen鈥檚 novels and explains 鈥� interwoven with tales from his personal life 鈥� the insights and character lessons he gained from each.
Reading Austen, he tells us, taught him moral responsibility, a less self-centered view of the universe, the value of actual learning, and that he knew nothing about real love.
In his day-to-day life, these insights led him to finish a dead-end relationship, move away from his father, choose better friends, adopt a cat, and 鈥� finally 鈥� discover that love is more than just romance.
A couple of sections of 鈥淎 Jane Austen Education鈥� take a bit longer than necessary to make their points. Overall, however, this is a quick but nourishing read. It鈥檚 got everything that a good classroom teacher might hope for 鈥� insight, honest self-reflection, hunger for learning, and a genuine love of good literature.
Read this book and then hand it along to your favorite angry young scholar. Next thing you know, he鈥檒l be craving Bront毛.
Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor鈥檚 books editor.
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