{"id":1450,"date":"2017-03-24T07:30:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T07:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=1450"},"modified":"2017-03-23T21:53:48","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T21:53:48","slug":"austen-powers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2017\/03\/24\/austen-powers\/","title":{"rendered":"Austen powers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get this. Somewhere around 230 years ago, teenage Jane Austen wrote the name of someone she fancied on her pencil case<\/a>. Okay, it was actually the names of two different someones but then it wasn’t a pencil case, she wasn’t at school. She was in a church and she filled out two proper and official marriage records saying she was the wife of these guys.<\/p>\n

I like that while she’s still famous, the two men are so forgotten that nobody can tell now whether they were even real. And I just like imagining her doing this, giggling.<\/p>\n

And as delighted as I was when this news was reported earlier in the week, it does not surprise me at all that she sounds like a present-day teenager<\/p>\n

For a few years ago, BBC Radio 4 did a new dramatisation of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and I think I was reviewing it for Radio Times. I’m not sure now: either I was reviewing it or I’d taken illicit advantage of having access to the BBC Radio Previews press site.<\/p>\n

Either way, I was listening and getting into it apart from one thing. This particular production had decided to use a narrator and I twitch at narrators. Or at least I do when the narration is simply exposition, just trudging out the plot because it’s easier to say it than show it.<\/p>\n

This time my bias felt especially right because although it was better than boring exposition, it was witty and entertaining \u2013 until the narrator was saying something far too modern. I can’t remember now what it was but there was no chance Jane Austen would’ve approved of it, there was every chance that it would mean I gave the show a bad review.<\/p>\n

It was just anachronistic and enough so that I got out my Pride and Prejudice paperback to see how Austen wrote that part of the story.<\/p>\n

Yep.<\/p>\n

You’re right.<\/p>\n

The narrator’s dialogue in this Radio 4 dramatisation was verbatim Jane Austen. <\/p>\n

Two centuries after she wrote it down with, I don’t know, a quill pen, Austen’s words sound like she could’ve dictated it into Siri yesterday. <\/p>\n

Two centuries. <\/p>\n

Imagine writing anything that’s even remembered after two minutes. <\/p>\n

I first read her novels starting only about ten years ago but I’ve admired, relished and loved her writing. So I’m just tickled to think she was also a naughty teenager defacing Church records for a laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Get this. Somewhere around 230 years ago, teenage Jane Austen wrote the name of someone she fancied on her pencil … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[996,994,997,238,995,180],"class_list":["post-1450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-selfdistract","tag-bbc-news","tag-jane-austen","tag-marriage-register","tag-novels","tag-pride-and-prejudice","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-no","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1450"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1453,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1450\/revisions\/1453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}