Am I wrong for wanting a dog too?

Reading: Ragtime

Moving: I'm sure I meant to.

Listening: Terri Hendrix, whoever she is, covering the Waterboys' "Fisherman's Blues."

Watching: an amusing Canadian advert for John West fish, which RRP sent.

15 January 2001: Intervention

From email to my sister last week:

You know how I love Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, and yes, even Mansfield Park, even Northanger Abbey. I love them all.

You know how much I enjoy the BBC "Pride and Prejudice."

You know how much I sympathize with Bridget Jones being unable to interview Colin Firth about anything else but the swimming scene in the BBC "Pride and Prejudice."

You don't know but I'm telling you that I like Joan Aiken's Jane Fairfax and (though less) Eliza's Daughter, about Col. Brandon's friend's daughter's daughter.

You know I love love love love love the Emma Thompson "Sense and Sensibility" and the recent "Persuasion" and am so glad I fell asleep during the recent "Mansfield Park" because it sucked as well as being untrue to the book proving that Harold Pinter (who starred as Sir Thomas Bertram) sucks, just as I said after reading his abominable play "Homecoming" thirteen years ago, an opinion I tried to ameliorate when I learned of his excellent taste in wives (Antonia Fraser). But I was right. He sucks, because this movie sucked.

You don't know but I'm telling you that even though the Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma is badly cast (except for Jeremy Northram as Mr. Knightley), badly adapted, badly written, bad bad bad, and even though it's totally obvious she's going to marry him whereas in the book it's not, I'll happily watch it because Gwyneth has great hair. Ooo, and her neck....

I have also read a pseudonymous author who was wise to hide behind a fake name because her The Third Sister (about Margaret Dashwood) and Presumption about Mr. Darcy's younger sister suck suck suck. Fr'instance, in Presumption, Mr. Darcy's father's first name is alleged to be Fitzwilliam also, which it would not have been: Fitzwilliam was Lady Catherine de Bourgh's and Darcy's mother's maiden name--viz. Col. Fitzwilliam, their brother's child.

You don't know but I'm telling you that even though these bad books have been written, even though I have sullied my eye and brain with them, I don't immediately hurl such travesties from me.

Today at the library only because the spine had a pretty piece of tapestry and I can't get over that medieval thing (tapestry=good, as anyone who's watched "The Lion in Winter" nine million times could tell you), I pulled a book off the shelf.

Only when I held The Bar Sinister in my hands did I see it was a continuation of Pride and Prejudice.

At which point I was beyond hope. The blurb on the back was glowing praise from Kathryn Bake, "a writer for 'Melrose Place' and 'Murphy Brown.'" Nonetheless I remained powerless against the lure of yet more Janey-Jane, even faux Janey-Jane, in my pathetic life.

The very first sentence refers slightly obliquely to the fact that Elizabeth (spelled, inexplicably and inexcusably, Elisabeth) and Mr. Darcy have had sex.

I know. I know. I know, okay? I am powerless against it. The first step is merely to admit that there is a Higher Power.

And I have done so. There is such a power. It is Jane Austen, by the Climbing Tree, and I am powerless against her.

Unfortunately, I am powerless against her poor imitators as well.

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After the trip to the library, I went to a coworker who is familiar with these my foibles and laid it all out, probably just as emphatically. She told me I'd have read it by the end of the weekend (i.e. yesterday). I didn't. I read Ragtime and worked on the house and watched "Jaws" and "Jaws" outtakes and "The Making of Jaws" all from the DVD RDC gave me for Christmas, speaking of my other weakness. Is it going to have anything about Col. Fitzwilliam? about Elizabeth and Georgianna becoming friends? about how Lady Catherine treats Elizabeth? This is why I despise all those sequels to Julie of the Wolves: I would rather use my imagination about what happens next rather than see how Jean Craighead George betrayed her characters. This isn't Jane Austen betraying herself, not that that makes it any better. I am a sick pup.

So now it's Monday. I read a few pages, just a few, instead of Ragtime. It's ridiculous!

• It refers to Georgianna having 30,000 pounds a year! Her dowry was 30,000, as was Emma's. The income from that would have been 1,500 pounds. It's an indication of how early in Austen's career she wrote Sense and Sensibility that Miss Grey had fifty, because nobody had fifty, which is how that sum is a pleasant joke between Elizabeth Bennett and Col. Fitzwilliam in Pride and Prejudice.
• An unattributed snippet of review: "Witty and very sexy in that 'oh so veddy proper' British manner...." and thus far, that's true: like the unbearable Brit accent the Tattered Cover person affected during the midnight sale of Goblet of Fire this summer.