Janeite Jar

One of the best things that had happened to me was the crash of my first laptop in the middle of my PhD. It meant I had to get a new one. (Computer, not degree.) One that came with a free e-reader, a Barnes & Noble Nook. Said Nook held a free book. The book was Pride and Prejudice.

I recall no plans to read it. I had already tried it in undergraddom and had quit speedily when in the third or fourth chapter the first ball came on. It was the silliest fiction I had encountered. Later, I nodded enthusiastically when P. G. Wodehouse wondered: "How do you feel about literary classics? I have come to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with me, because I can't read them. I tried Jane Austen and was bored stiff...". But now it was a rainy Eugene night at the bus stop, and the Nook was in my bag, so why not while away the wait with whatever prose was at hand? It was a mild surprise to find pith and wit -- which I had missed in the first round -- in the dialogue of Chapter 1. Over the ensuing weeks the gentle pull of the goings-on at Hertfordshire kept me coming back, though progress was adiabatically slow and intentions of finishing it were none. By the time my Nook was stolen at Salem in a bus from Chennai to Tirupur, I had built enough interest in the characters to compensate with a hard copy -- albeit in no hurry. There seemed to be no plot, after all.

What I then hadn't the foggiest of was that this was the most explosive novel I was to be amongst. That I would rate it the greatest story ever told. That I would read and re-read and re-read nothing else over the next year, plumbing further and further to locate its bottom and always coming up empty-handed (as I still am). That, in short, it would save and make me. That each of my next six years would be marked by an Austen -- by design, for the finest wine must be taken by the littlest of sips. That Miss Austen had wrought in Emma and Mansfield Park monuments equal to Pride and Prejudice. That I would be channeling her in writing physics papers. That visiting her house in Chawton would be the acme of my 2024.

Enough, then, about me and Jane. Let us talk about Jane and me.