what a lovely story! i read it and then immediately read your commentary on it which is an experience i generally try to avoid (like going to letterboxd right after the movie is over) but in this case it was enriching...
i like the analysis of the story's structure as trinitarian (per MF DOOM, "notice parables of three in every other infe…
what a lovely story! i read it and then immediately read your commentary on it which is an experience i generally try to avoid (like going to letterboxd right after the movie is over) but in this case it was enriching...
i like the analysis of the story's structure as trinitarian (per MF DOOM, "notice parables of three in every other inference"). you have that scene with the grandmother, whose bad memory can do what shorty's "good memory" cannot, which is to recognize jane (and annie) at once as a homely and an utterly remote figure, someone on whom we have certain claims but who also has claims on us.
also it is funny that neither shorty nor enid ("it must be years since you read the novels") are engaging with jane austen as an artist anymore, only as a figure of public or private record...the only person who even tries is lois.
haha it's true about Austen as an artist—and thinking about it all of Shorty's public writing seems like it has an aim toward sort of sexually humiliating artists, but is not really interested in them as people who make art? Like "if you read between the lines here you can tell Shakespeare had venereal disease" etc.
Though what's also interesting to me, thinking about it, about Annie's act of burning the letters is the degree to which it's about loyalty to Austen the person… like pure loyalty to the artist might have demanded they be kept because it is, after all, her writing! but she does it for the same reason Cassandra does, which is that she sees Austen as a human being who doesn't lose her right to privacy because she's a genius… which is not the attitude Shorty takes to his subjects even though it could be cast as "humanizing" them. I mean I think this is what you mean by "homely and utterly remote."
yes, i was sort of going for the fact that when you come home after a long time you are recognized both as still the same ("homely") and also unalterably changed, a good family will still expect some things from you but also keep limits on themselves...jane austen, maybe, knew this which is why she might have loved sailors, the constant presence of homecomings.
shorty thinks that, because austen is so distant from him, he's entitled to do what he likes with her letters as a pure academic exercise. from the opposite perspective, the gran is very close to jane austen and might be expected to think "well, she's my childhood, i have a right to read these." but she knows that jane austen is always and forever her own person, even if she belongs to the family in important ways. and i know a lot of people who have those principles...auden was strongly against rummaging through the dead's old stuff, i know there are people who refuse to read kafka besides Betrachtung and The Metamorphosis because they see max brod's refusal to burn the work as such a betrayal.
also i think part of the joke of the story is that it is written in a way shorty would be unable to find fault in—compressed, elliptical, with the minimum amount of detail. the double joke (I think?) is that annie is implicitly writing this just for enid, so in fact this whole story is something not meant for public consumption! the act of reading, maybe, makes us all into miniature shortys.
what a lovely story! i read it and then immediately read your commentary on it which is an experience i generally try to avoid (like going to letterboxd right after the movie is over) but in this case it was enriching...
i like the analysis of the story's structure as trinitarian (per MF DOOM, "notice parables of three in every other inference"). you have that scene with the grandmother, whose bad memory can do what shorty's "good memory" cannot, which is to recognize jane (and annie) at once as a homely and an utterly remote figure, someone on whom we have certain claims but who also has claims on us.
also it is funny that neither shorty nor enid ("it must be years since you read the novels") are engaging with jane austen as an artist anymore, only as a figure of public or private record...the only person who even tries is lois.
in 2025 i should finally get into mf doom.......
haha it's true about Austen as an artist—and thinking about it all of Shorty's public writing seems like it has an aim toward sort of sexually humiliating artists, but is not really interested in them as people who make art? Like "if you read between the lines here you can tell Shakespeare had venereal disease" etc.
Though what's also interesting to me, thinking about it, about Annie's act of burning the letters is the degree to which it's about loyalty to Austen the person… like pure loyalty to the artist might have demanded they be kept because it is, after all, her writing! but she does it for the same reason Cassandra does, which is that she sees Austen as a human being who doesn't lose her right to privacy because she's a genius… which is not the attitude Shorty takes to his subjects even though it could be cast as "humanizing" them. I mean I think this is what you mean by "homely and utterly remote."
yes, i was sort of going for the fact that when you come home after a long time you are recognized both as still the same ("homely") and also unalterably changed, a good family will still expect some things from you but also keep limits on themselves...jane austen, maybe, knew this which is why she might have loved sailors, the constant presence of homecomings.
shorty thinks that, because austen is so distant from him, he's entitled to do what he likes with her letters as a pure academic exercise. from the opposite perspective, the gran is very close to jane austen and might be expected to think "well, she's my childhood, i have a right to read these." but she knows that jane austen is always and forever her own person, even if she belongs to the family in important ways. and i know a lot of people who have those principles...auden was strongly against rummaging through the dead's old stuff, i know there are people who refuse to read kafka besides Betrachtung and The Metamorphosis because they see max brod's refusal to burn the work as such a betrayal.
also i think part of the joke of the story is that it is written in a way shorty would be unable to find fault in—compressed, elliptical, with the minimum amount of detail. the double joke (I think?) is that annie is implicitly writing this just for enid, so in fact this whole story is something not meant for public consumption! the act of reading, maybe, makes us all into miniature shortys.