How we feel Is an illusion we choose
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Steven,
ReplyDeleteI suspect that too many writers don't understand that it isn't the plot that makes an Austen novel. It's the intelligence and wit in the author, which appears in the narrative, that makes her works so great and that demands rereading.
Dear Fred,
ReplyDeleteAnd a sense of a place, a time, and a way of being. A modern comedy of manners would necessarily NOT imitate Austen because modern deportment is quite different and modern expectations different. And while it is a time-honored tradition to "lift" plots, Austen's are particularly intractable because the plots are driven by the characters and the expectations they have of one another--expectations that could not possibly make it into the modern world in anything that we would recognize as Austen.
You make several good points here.
shalom,
Steven