Love and Death in the American Book Clubs
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- Towards a Cultural History of Book Clubs
- Mathew Pearl, The Dante Club (2003)
- Karen Joy Fowler, The Jane Austin Book Club (2004)
BIODATA
Mathew Pearl (1975-)
Graduated from Harvard University summa cum laude in English and American literature in 1997, and in 2000 from Yale Law School. In 1998, he won the prestigious Dante Prize from the Dante Society of America for his scholarly work. He grew up in Fort Lauderdale, FL and currently lives in Cambridge, MA. In 1998, he won the prestigious Dante prize from the Dante Society of America for his scholarly work. He wrote the first draft of The Dante Club while attending Yale Law School, where he received his J. D. in 2000. He has served as a Teaching Fellow for Harvard literature courses and a creative writing tutor. (New York: Random House, 2003) is his first novel and will be translated into over 30 languages around the world.
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775 at Steventon, Hampshire, England (near Basingstoke). She was the seventh child (out of eight) and the second daughter (out of two), of the Rev. George Austen, 1731-1805 (the local rector, or Church of England clergyman), and his wife Cassandra (Leigh), 1739-1827 .
Jane Austen did a fair amount of reading, of both the serious and the popular literature of the day (her father had a library of 500 books by 1801, and she wrote that she and her family were "great novel readers, and not ashamed of being so"). However decorous she later chose to be in her own novels, she was very familiar with eighteenth century novels, such as those of Fielding and Richardson, which were much less inhibited than those of the later (near-)Victorian era. Jane Austen wrote her Juvenilia from 1787 to 1793; they include many humorous parodies of the literature of the day, such as Love and Friendship, and are collected in three manuscript volumes. They were originally written for the amusement of her family, and most of the pieces are dedicated to one or another of her relatives or family friends.
Earlier versions of the novels eventually published as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Northanger Abbey (1803) were all begun and worked on from 1795 to 1799 (at this early period, their working titles were Elinor and Marianne, First Impressions, and Susan respectively). She further published Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816) and Persuasion (1818).
Karen Joy Fowler (1950-)
Born February 7, in Bloomington, Indiana. Her father was a psychologist at the University, studying animal behavior. "Along with basketball, my family loved books. The day I got my first library card there was a special dinner to celebrate. And before I could read myself, I remember my father reading the Iliad to me, although really he was reading it to my older brother, I just got to be there. A shocking book! And I remember Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh in my father's voice and a bunch of other things that weren't movies yet."She took her BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley in 1972, and MA from UC Davis in 1974, in the same field. "As an undergraduate I had a special interest in India and Gandhi, and a general interest in imperialism. I find the intersection of cultures fascinating, the misunderstandings that occur, the mistakes that are innocently made. …As a graduate student I focused on China and Japan." Her novels include: Sarah Canary (1991, Commonwealth Award for Best First Novel), Sister Noon (2001) and The Jane Austen Book Club (New York: Putnam, 2004).
WORKS CITED
Davidson, Cathy, ed. Reading in America: Literature and Social History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.
Kotani, Mari. Alien Bedfellows. (Tokyo: Shohakusha, 2004).
Long, Elizabeth. Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.
QUOTATIONS
- As James Russel Lowell remarks in the novel, while they were translating Dante into ink, someone else was translating Dante into blood. …The characters in the novel are driven by a passion for literature, so if the novel itself helps foster that passion in someone else, that's an added bonus. …I like to think of the novel as, in a way, being about a book club. The Dante Club was one of America's most important book clubs, as their Wednesday night meetings ultimately led to our country's first exposure to Dante's poetry on a wide scale. There's a remarkable power about reading together, reading collectively, that's brought out by reading groups. ("A Conversation with the Author," Pearl, The Dante Club, 376-378).
- But Mr. Bennet was not of a disposition to seek comfort, for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice. He was fond of the country and of books; and from these tastes had arisen his principal enjoyments. To his wife he was very little otherwise indebted, than as her ignorance and folly had contributed to his amusement. This is not the sort of happiness which a man would in general wish to owe to his wife; but where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given. (Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 42)
- Almost a year earlier, Jocelyn had gone to Stockton for the annual meeting of the Inland Empire Hound Club. In celebration of a whole weekend free from dog hair … Jocelyn packed a great many black clothes. She wore a black beaded vest under a black cardigan. Black slacks and black socks. She attended panels entitled "Sight Hounds: What Makes Them Special?" and "Soothing the Savage Beast: New Modification Techniques for Aggressive Behaviors." …
On the same weekend and in the same hotel was a science fiction convention known as Westernessecon. In the lower-level conference rooms, science fiction fans were gathering to talk about books and mourn dead or dying TV shows. There were panels on "Why We Once Loved Buffy," "The Final Frontier: Manifest Destiny Goes Intergalactic," and "Santa Claus: God or Friend?" (Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club, Chapter4, 126-27)
- The meeting began with an unveiling. Sylvia had a birthday coming. It was still a few weeks off, but Allegra had made something she wanted us all to see, so she gave it to Sylvia early, wrapped in last week's funny papers. It was about the size and shape of a holiday cheese-ball. …Allegra had bought one of those black Magic 8-Balls, reamed it open, replaced the answers, and sealed it. She'd painted it a dark green, and over the old 8, she'd transferred a reproduction of Cassandra Austen's sketch of her sister, set in a framed oval like a cameo. A ribbon wound about the ball. Ask Austen was painted in red on the ribbon. Allegra had matched Austen's writing from a facsimile in the university library. …
"Should I take a trip?" Bernadette asked Austen. She'd been contemplating a birding expedition to Costa Rica. …She shook the ball, upended it, and waited it. It is not everyone who has your passions for dead leaves.
"Go in autumn," Jocelyn translated. …
"Should I buy a new computer?" Prudie asked.
Austen answered, My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.
"I guess that's no," Allegra said. "You have to squint a bit. It's sort of a Zen experience." (Fowler, The Jane Austen Book Club, Chapter6, 233-34)
- I have already mentioned the change in members' educational level and the ways reading groups have shifted in function from supplementing nineteenth-century women's meager formal education to continuing some of the pleasures of twentieth-century women's college experience in a more informal venue. … Contemporary women do not have to acquire-or prove-their competence in this way, because they are already college educated. …The format of contemporary groups communicates a self that is already so well acquainted with books and book discussion that book talk is easy and "natural, " pleasurable than laborious. These modern selves are the heirs to decades of struggle to establish and broaden women's higher education. The very "naturalness" of informal reading groups is a historical construction, the sediment of efforts contributed in part by earlier reading groups, who would probably be both surprised and gratified to see the casual competence displayed by their descendents. (Long, Book Clubs, Chapter 3, 68-69).
