Word: austen
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...Beaverbrook is a born raconteur with a novelist's ear for intimate dialogue, and he peppers his chronicle with anecdotes, gibes, and Maxims that must be the despair of his gossip columnists. Of Austen Chamberlain, he writes cuttingly: "He always played the game, and always lost...
...Chamberlain, "the most important and impressive guest," was expounding on Ireland. "Only one detail was going wrong," writes Beaverbrook. "The butler was obviously tight." Furiously, their hostess scribbled a note and handed it to the butler, who put it "on a big and beautiful salver and, walking unsteadily to Austen Chamberlain, with a deep bow presented the message." It read: "You are drunk-leave the room at once...
George Gordon Byron's courtship was as mannered as a Jane Austen novel and his honeymoon as melodramatic as The Mysteries of Udolpho. On the famous drive of the bridal pair from Seaham to Halnaby, Byron's "countenance changed to gloom & defiance as soon as we got into the carriage. He began singing in a wild manner as he usually does when angry and scarcely spoke to me till we came near Durham." Later, added his bride, he said, "Now I have you in my power, and I could make you feel it." The poet, after balking...
...Princeton friend complained that "a student of English literature will be given on week to write an essay on Jane Austen" and points out that this involves having read six novels and some critical and biographical works. But surely he doesn't come to Oxford without having read two, dare we say three, Austen novels already? Didn't his tutor ask him to read up on Austen over the vacation? Hasn't he looked at the examination papers, and noticed a regular question on Austen? If the answer to all these questions is no, then all the more reason...
Unfortunately, however, the "relevance of Jane Austen" is not at all clear. It is only mentioned once, in the next to last paragraph. Kampf claims that the solution to the dilemma of the Jewish writer, who either had to assimilate and lose his Jewishness, or get stuck in the dead-end of "ghetto literature," is "the novel of manners." But he never does explain what he means. He says Bernard Malamud's writing, for instance, is "claustrophobic" and smacks too much of the ghetto. But is anyone's writing more claustrophobic than Jane Austen's? Is The Magic Barrel...