Ranking Jane Austen

I’m teaching Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility in my British literature course this semester, and I decided it would be a good excuse to read her other novels. Before last year I’d only read S&S and Emma, which I read last spring and enjoyed a great deal (though, as you’ll see, it only receives a middling rank in my list below).

Ranking Austen’s novels is exactly the kind of literary sacrilege I need to entertain myself with books these days. My ranking has only one criterion: how much pleasure the book brought me. It goes almost without saying that I enjoyed reading every title on this list. Austen may well be the greatest prose stylist of the English language in addition to being one of the keenest observers of human nature.

I’ll try not to spoil the plots of the novels as I rank them, though it’s almost impossible to spoil the plot of an Austen novel. Exactly what you think will happen from the very beginning will inevitably happen. The pleasure—and reading Austen is a lesson in pleasure—consists in all of the ways in which the inevitable is delayed.

6. Northanger Abbey
The novel lowest on this list is also the greatest departure from Austen’s formula. It’s a parody which relies in part on your familiarity with tropes of Gothic literature to appreciate. It’s also the most self-conscious of Austen’s books: she rouses herself to a defense of novels in general, wherein “the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” All this is right and just, but the hallmarks of Austen’s appeal are in less than full force here.

5. Mansfield Park
Despite the fact that Austen’s novels are essentially and powerfully conservative, they rarely come across as preachy. Mansfield Park occasionally does. Coincidentally, it’s the one book that almost drew from me a yawn. We learn what Austen’s vision of poverty is: being only able to afford rude and disobedient servants. Fanny Price, sweet as she is, has little personality outside of being good and shy. Nevertheless, she offers what you expect from one of Austen’s heroines: longsuffering love, a misunderstood heart, and unappreciated virtue.

4. Emma
Emma Woodhouse is loud, controlling, and thinks too highly of herself. Yet you still feel her concerns and participate in her disappointments. The various intrigues she gets herself into are a lot of fun, and much of the novel’s humor is at the expense of the protagonist. Austen’s unparalleled wit manages to be at once incisive and compassionate. It might be possible, at first glance, to mistake Austen’s satiric eye as indicative of a radical politics. But the only real villains in her novels are those who flagrantly disregard society’s rules. If you’re not a scofflaw, you’re at worst charmingly absurd.

3. Sense and Sensibility
Even my third-favorite Austen novel must fall somewhere on the list of my all-time favorite novels. This is a very ill-defined list, and I can’t say whether ten or a hundred titles are on it, but I’m reasonably certain the next three are. These three are Austen at her most formulaic and the height of her powers: two well-bred sisters in somewhat straitened financial circumstances secure spouses for themselves. Elinor, the eldest, is not the focus of the narrative, but her heroic displays of reserve and discretion are perhaps the most moving parts of this novel. Yes, there’s also a third sister.

2. Pride and Prejudice
Now there are five sisters, but really there are still only two and one plot point. Pride and Prejudice is merely Sense and Sensibility perfected. Elizabeth is a smarter, better judging, more deserving Marianne. She’s rightfully confident in her own good sense and doesn’t scruple to talk back to her social superiors. Jane doesn’t quite measure up to the heroics of Elinor in S&S, but Darcy is the Batman of the Regency era, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

1. Persuasion
Why is Persuasion the best Jane Austen novel? It’s the most Jane Austen of them all. It’s a short book, and it packs in everything you could want. There’s not much fluff here: only one extra sister. Much of the story has already transpired by the first page of the novel, and the protagonist is an actual adult. The emotional climaxes, where everything is revealed and the unsaid is finally said, are Austen at her best—and most contrived, and most maudlin—but that’s what you came for, and that’s exactly what you get.

Never fail

I heard this song when we started going to a church here in Maryland and it immediately struck a chord in me. It’s about waiting while holding on to God’s promises.

For a really long time I’ve been waiting to move back to California. I miss the people, the weather, the food. I’ve been away for 7 years now, most of my 20’s and now my early 30’s. As I was growing up, the friends I admired and cherished most were the ones who cared about mentoring a younger crowd, spending time with us in small group and the basketball court. I’ll always remember the inclusive love of that community. Part of the urgency I felt in wanting to move back was the sense that I needed to give some of that back. And I only know how to do so in the spaces where it was given to me.

The other matter of urgency was my family’s health. My grandmother was always the picture of youth, being very active well into her 80’s. In recent years, we saw her health deteriorate and I wanted to spend more time in the home where she helped raise me. In the past year, my prayers for her health were increasingly desperate. I asked God for just a bit more time, a year or a couple of years. I didn’t feel it was too much to ask. If God was making it so difficult to move back, then surely he wouldn’t punish me for being away.

She passed away in May and I think everyone she left behind is still reckoning with the massive loss.

A refrain in the song that keeps coming back to me is: “You have never failed me yet.” The line has a different weight in the lungs now. Before it sounded with equal parts gratitude and bluster, in defiance of death and the passing of time. Today, the line, when I manage it, sounds more like a question. What does it mean to insist on God’s faithfulness when it feels like God has failed me and I’ve failed everyone?

I really don’t know. I think I’ll keep saying it anyway, since that’s something my grandma would do. I see her in front of the piano, after her eyes have failed her, after her hands have failed her, after her voice has failed her, and she is still singing.

Professing

I’ve been back from CA and Slovenia for over a month now. This summer, I’m supposed to be preparing for next semester’s classes, revising and submitting articles for publication, writing proposals for conferences, and preparing for another job market run. I haven’t really done any of that.

I just don’t feel at all compelled to do these things. Not that I don’t need to. It’s almost the opposite. The job market for professors in the humanities (languages, philosophy, history, religion) is so dire that there are dozens or hundreds of extremely well qualified applicants for every opening. What that means is competition among candidates has never been so fierce. Where previously you just needed a peer-reviewed article, now you need a book. If I don’t spend my summer applying to grants and fellowships, editing, networking, i.e. being productive, I’m falling behind.

What I’ve realized is that there are so many people out there who are greatly motivated to do these things. They enjoy doing them, or at least they must enjoy the rewards that come from doing them, the recognition and the status. They can’t imagine themselves doing anything else. They want it so much more than I do; they deserve it more.

I was never the kid in the classroom who would remind the teacher to assign homework. Somehow I’ve ended up in a profession where everyone is that kid. I was the one shuffling things around in my backpack to make it look like I was trying to find an assignment I obviously never attempted.

I can’t say I wasn’t always aware this is how it would be. I never had many enchanted notions about the profession. I suppose what took me by surprise is how easy it was to fall into the hamster wheel of progressing your career. Once you get a bit of momentum going you can’t stop. There’s only one way forward and you press on, faster and faster just trying to keep up with yourself.

Piran

Slovenia only has 42 kilometers of coastline, but how much do you need?

You can just sit by the water and watch things pass by.

Big town feel

Ljubljana is a city of fewer than 300,000, making it somewhat small in comparison to what I typically think of as a “big city.” Even Atlanta is substantially more populous than Slovenia’s capital. What makes Ljubljana feel like a big city is the culture of being out and about. A large part of the city center is pedestrianized, and the city’s inhabitants take advantage by drinking coffee or beer at the cafes that line the river, walking their dogs, or getting groceries at the open air markets. Tourism has exploded over the last decade, but the large majority of the foot traffic is still from locals. They know to enjoy what they have.

I’ve missed living in a city, particularly a European one. I’m very far from being a social person, and I don’t mind being by myself. Even so, relocating to southern Maryland, far from my workplace as well as Elly’s, has felt isolating at times. Being in a city surrounded by people makes being on your own bearable. It’s a particular sensation of being alone together.

Krakovska Ulica

I’m in Slovenia for two weeks as a visiting scholar at the University of Ljubljana. My apartment is a five minute walk from the Filozofska fakulteta, the arts and humanities building.

Here is a garden I pass by.

In memoriam

Hands

These, that half my lifetime ago started to lose feeling
after so many split green peas, shrimp denuded
and psalms transcribed, after having
helped so many bodies out of the water,
new creations after baptism, forged
a few passport papers,
and shut not a few eyelids forever,
stumble now across the keys in broken time,
yielding bars in stray measure—
these don’t listen anymore, you say

but they are vessels of gold and silver,
having traveled from feet in washtubs
to foreheads anointed with oil.
Now they strain to hit the notes
of a two-line melody, having
been made inessential.

May 2008
In memoriam, May 2019

Hancock farm

This is one of the farms near us where we get some of our food. We get most of our food from Costco, but this farm in particular has “Korean-style ribs,” also known as LA-style ribs. Every time we go, we buy their whole stock. There are very few Asians around here, but there must be other people buying the cut as well.

Besides this one, there are several family farms close by, including one right next to our neighborhood. They don’t sell produce during the winter.

Hair

I started cutting my own hair a long time ago, when I was still in Irvine. It saves money, but more importantly it saves time and the effort of social interaction. I don’t have to try to explain to the barber what kind of haircut I want. I grew up getting my hair cut for $5 (+$1 tip) at the barber shop across the street from Bank of America. All I knew was that I was getting a “regular” haircut. That’s still all I know.

Moving here I figured it would be an appropriate time to start having other people cut my hair again. It turned out very poorly. I didn’t know this, and evidently my barber didn’t either, but you can’t cut straight hair like you cut curly hair. I suppose it was a case of culture shock.

I’ve gone back to cutting my own hair.

The call

I’ve been in Maryland for almost a year now. I wanted to figure out if being a college professor suited me. Halfway into my two-year visiting position, I still don’t know. But I’m leaning towards “no.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about calling. People have been called by God to go places and do things since the beginning of recorded time. Jonah refused the call to go to Nineveh. Calling, in this biblical sense, is primarily a spiritual matter. If you have this kind of a calling, you could say, along with the Blues Brothers, “We’re on a mission from God.”

But we mostly talk about calling in a different sense. Ever since the beginning of the modern period (~1700s), people have had to figure out what to do to make a living. Autobiographies from around this time are full of stories of people trying to figure this out. Richard Norwood, a famous Puritan (an English Calvinist), lost his scholarship, dropped out of school, and became a fishmonger’s apprentice, then a diver, a surveyor, and a mathematician. Throughout his life, Norwood was desperately trying to figure out his calling and his election (whether he was saved or not). As for many other Calvinists, the two concerns were inseparable.

So, calling is a modern concern. Throughout most of history, people didn’t have callings. In my observation, many people today also don’t have callings. What I mean is that they don’t have a strong sense that their life’s purpose is tied to a particular career choice. This is something of a disadvantage. Not having a calling means you’re less well suited for a modern world.

My dad immigrated to the United States in 1985. He’s done many things since then. He’s been a tour guide, a real estate agent, a sunglasses salesman, a computer repairman, and an Uber driver (to name just a few). He’s never stayed long in one place, even when he does well, because the work has never been fully satisfying. Now, he is disabled and cannot work.

Not having a calling is a disadvantage because it can make life difficult for you. The world rewards those who are dedicated to advancing their careers. If you are not, then there is something wrong with you. You are ill-suited for your environment.

As cities encroach on wilderness, animals with certain traits adapt better to the new habitat. Pigeons thrive on breadcrumbs, chicken nuggets, and drainwater. They are kings in modern life.