Encouraged by my wife, I recently undertook the reading of Jane Austen's Emma, which I have now completed. Nabokov's Lectures on Literature begins with Austen's Mansfield Park and, transitioning to Bleak House, he writes:
We are now ready to tackle Dickens. We are now ready to embrace Dickens. We are now ready to bask in Dickens. In our dealings with Jane Austen we had to make a certain effort in order to join the ladies in the drawing room. In the case of Dickens we remain at table with our tawny port.
Fair enough. She is not Dickens. She moves within a smaller space, so sees less, but she sees clearly everything her eye falls upon. Reading her novels--I have now in my life read Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Emma--is like being in the company of someone shrewd and tart. What view of things does she take? Well, it says something that "sensible" and "tolerable" are candidates for her favorite adjective. Like Dr. Johnson, who was still alive and active when she was born, she counsels against expecting too much from life. She is intelligent, humane, and unsentimental. I guess I have been basking in Jane Austen.
While sunk happily in Emma I thought now and again of Judith Martin, the journalist who writes the Miss Manners column. She has long been a favorite of mine, and everything I've said about Jane Austen I'd say about Miss Manners, excepting the observation about diction. (Miss Manners, being a master of the plain style of expository prose, allows no candidates for favorite adjective.) Imagine my delight, then, when two-thirds of the way through Emma I put it aside briefly to read in bed The New York Review and, in an article about the journals of Leo Lerman, discovered the author, Daniel Mendelsohn, excerpting for its excellence the following passage from the 654-page sprawl:
How Miss Austen strikes flint on stone, and how sparks fly, sometimes igniting small, astonishing fires, sometimes bursting into conflagration.... The amusement and shock of joy comes from how she views commonsensically, from some sharp eminence. She startles realistically--there's the link with Judith. The view from the same sharp eminence.
Mendelsohn introduces this quotation by admitting that the comparison seems "improbable, even silly--and yet ultimately persuasive." I didn't have to be persuaded and will close for the day by setting down a few of Miss Manners' more memorable flights. Even on the subject of homosexuality she reminds me of Jane Austen.
Allowing an unimportant mistake to pass without comment is a wonderful social grace.
Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet.
If you can't be kind, at least be vague.
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
Dear Miss Manners: What am I supposed to say when I am introduced to a homosexual "couple"? Gentle Reader: "How do you do?" "How do you do?"
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection is the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
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