A pleasing divertissement for Austen fans everywhere.
A light and frothy tour of Austenworld and its Janeites.
“I didn’t last in Austenworld,” writes Pacific Standard senior editor Scheinman, “but for a time it was ludicrous, intoxicating, and sometimes heartbreaking.” If his mother hadn’t been a noted Austen scholar, he “might never have found [his] way in.” When young, he started with Austen’s juvenile notebooks, Austen’s own “record of fandom,” filled with “perverse celebrations of her literary enthusiasms.” In his witty, sly, and often humorous first book, Scheinman discusses his time as a graduate student when one of his graduate professors decided to hold the first-ever Jane Austen Summer Camp. “American enthusiasm for Austen is (as I would soon learn) passionate to the point of obsession,” he writes. At first, it “sounded dreamlike, a little unreal.” He notes that in the late 19th century, scholar and critic George Saintsbury coined the term “Janeite” for those devoted to her work, and the great novelist E.M. Forster was “one of the more conspicuous Janeites of his age.” To Scheinman, the gathering reminded him of a “religious diaspora, a far-flung church, whose functionaries convene in heterodox worship.” Let the tour begin. First, the costumes: “Dressing as Mr. Darcy at an Austen symposium is like playing Mickey Mouse at Disney World.” Then the panels, where “representatives of the academy” would mingle with “their civilian counterparts.” Followed by a little table talk at meal times: “they offer the most gossipy and delicious interactions.” Next, the theatricals, plays about Austen and her characters written and performed (in costume) by participants as well as screenings of films about Austen’s books. Last but not least, there’s the Ball. After all, Henry, Austen’s favorite brother, wrote that Jane “enjoyed dancing, and excelled at it.” Scheinman picks and pokes a little here and there, but he admits it’s “some of the best and cleanest fun available to an academic.”
A pleasing divertissement for Austen fans everywhere.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-86547-821-3
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
