Word: austen
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Never mind, for the moment, that this definition could, with a little tweaking of emphases, apply equally well to Homer's Odyssey, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The R.W.A. is not indulging in literary criticism here but rather offering its 8,200 members a blueprint for success in the contemporary marketplace. Because the people who find the keenest emotional satisfaction in romance novels tend to be their authors and publishers. More than half the mass-market paperback fiction titles sold annually in the U.S. are romance novels. Factor in hardback sales...
...create and re-create for her a vision of a fictional world that is free of moral ambiguity, a larger-than-life domain in which such ideals as courage, justice, honor, loyalty and love are challenged and upheld." Free of moral ambiguity? So much, then, for Homer, Shakespeare and Austen...
...some hits cry out for sequels, whereas other books are fine just as they are. We may occasionally wonder what happens after Elizabeth Bennett marries Mr. Darcy (after all, he's kind of difficult), but Jane Austen's subsequent novels are variations on a theme, not repetitions of one. With her modern-day version of Pride and Prejudice, on the other hand, Fielding got caught in the vise of a lucrative contract and a punishing deadline, and the new book has an air of desperation. With the same diary format, complete with alcohol and cigarette logs, and the same wacky...
...like a diary ("7.32 a.m. Except do not have any mushrooms or sausages. 7.33 a.m. Or eggs."), as interior monologue it's genius. The punning title may bring to mind Augustan seriousness, but Bridget continues to radiate glorious energy, and that sheer energy propels The Edge of Reason. Like Austen's Emma (it's hard to avoid referencing Austen when a novel includes elements such as the aforementioned Darcy, the scheming Rebecca and mislaid letters), a large part of the book's humor derives in part from the deluded conviction of a heroine who 'knows' what should be done...
...reputation for his ability to exploit his character's internal conflicts in any time or place, be it Jane Austen's England in his 1995 release Sense and Sensibility, or the alienated '70s suburbia of 1997's The Ice Storm. Yet his latest project, Ride With the Devil, based on Daniel Woodrell's novel Woe to Live On, reflects the damage too much praise can have on a director. All that distinguishes Ride with the Devil as anything other than a glorified action flick is a splattering of historical nuances and the occasional flirtation with character complexity...