So I’m reading Mansfield Park for book club. I was reading like a mad man this weekend thinking book club was this Wednesday but I am saved and can once again procrastinate as book club is next week. It has gotten me thinking though and I don’t know if I’ll bring up at book club or not – am actually afraid to bring up here as I know a lot of people are die-hard Jane Austen fans. But here I go (don’t be too mean in the comments).
Is Austen as good of writer as everyone claims or is she really the seventeen hundred’s version of say a Nicholas Sparks? I read a lot and I’ve read a lot of Jane Austen books (if not all at this point at least 90%). And reading this one I’ve struck with the thought all her books are pretty much the same romance bundled up and packaged under different characters and different names. Girl meets boy, is somehow unworthy of boy or not interested in boy, girl realizes she is deeply madly in love with said boy, randomness happens (usually something to do with what’s proper and not or social classes), boy and girl get together. I tried to google Jane Austen critics but got a bunch of literary reviews that I didn’t feel like reading and none that screamed in the Google site description – same story over and over. Are they well written? Sure – better than half the dribble current authors put out at lightning speed. But that doesn’t change the fact that pretty early on you can guess where the story is going.
Maybe this is just the way it is with romance – I recently heard a romance writer talk and she said publishers want the heroine and hero to meet in the first chapter and if you can do it on the first page even better. Have romances not changed in 200 years?
It makes me mad though when I fall for a writer and slowly come to realize after devouring a few of their books that it’s the same stories repacked in a shiny new cover with a few new names. I can name a list right now: Janet Evanovich, Nicholas Sparks, Danielle Steel, practically any romance novel, Jodi Picoult, Sophia Kinsella (although I’m still addicted to the shopaholic series)…. They all have a stick – Nicholas Sparks is guaranteeing some tragic event, Danielle Steel is most often some down in her luck heroine with expensive things meeting an unlikely price charming, Evanovich with her Plum series is all about an unlikely bounty hunter and the scrapes she continually finds herself in… And Picoult, who used to be a favorite of mine is all drama wrapped up in a social commentary of sorts - school shootings, the death penalty, suicide, it’s all fair game and it’s all likely to be an open ending.
Is it the curse of a prolific author to be drawn to the same story over and over? Maybe. I truly believe you write things you want to read. But I also think some of it is pure laziness - it's easy to repackage something that already works. Hell, half my job is to think of a new way to sell the same products. There's only so many ways you can write a love story.
So get to discussing... I'm interested on your take.
You know, I think you hit the nail on the head. She definitely wrote basically 7 novels (or however many it was) that were all the same. Not only about social norms, etc. as you put up (someone falls in love with someone not really worthy), but also how one person "finds themself" and becomes a better person, or realizes that a person isn't as bad as they thought they were. So, I think all her themes are pretty much the same. And all her books are the same. I totally agree with you. And I'm wondering if she's not so much the most amazing author of all time, so much that for where she was, and who she was, and society at that time, that it was amazing that she was able to write so well. So, we're forced to read her and think she's amazing or else we look dumb. Why wouldn't we think she was amazing, everyone else does, including very learned professors and book critics.
ReplyDeleteBut, in her defense, I will say, back then, they didn't really have much of anything else to write about. It wasn't like they had the life we do now where they're more knowledgeable of other things to write about. So, that's her excuse... what about the other writers you mentioned? What's their excuse? (which, by the way, I think Nicolas Sparks was the most ingenious comparison ever!) But also all those fun chick lit books are all the same stories over and over again. Oh, I want to buy expensive clothes and fall in love with a boy that's out of my league.
Maybe it is their curse. Either to write the same story over and over again, or to write 7 books that is really one long story (a la Harry Potter). I don't know. You're the writer! :)
I'm glad you agree w/me. I'm a little over halfway through and I'm like this is totally following the same path as her other books I've read. Sure different characters, tweaked story but same ideas. It's good but it just was funny that it struck me like that and I was thinking... would we consider any of the authors that write like this today (the same romance story over and over) excellent writers that we need to write reports about. I doubt anyone has written a report on Nicholas Sparks for AP English. I could be wrong and his books are good but if you've read three you've read them all. It frustrates me I want them to be different, I want to hear something new and to push the boundaries and think outside the box... but that could be me.
ReplyDeleteWell, maybe you can do it! Get on it! Write the next American classic!!! :)
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