Pride & Prejudice

Martin Amis’s dedication to Jane Austen in “The Pregnant Widow” piqued my interest so I’ve been on a Jane Austen “jag”. Although I’d read “Pride & Prejudice” I’ve never been much of a fan. Given my rigorous defence of “Moby Dick” there might be some scepticism of the reason for the lukewarm reception – I remember justifying my lack of enthusiasm to a friend by telling her I like sentences that if I read aloud I’d have a chance of finishing before I turned blue. Since that time, either my lungs have improved or my aesthetic sensibilities have.

I think I also might have said there‘s a limit to how much I need to know about the codes of conduct of early 19th century polite society. While I still think there’s some mileage in these opinions they’re most probably justifications after the fact. The real reason would have been political bias, that next to “The Jungle” or “Germinal”, “Pride And Prejudice” seemed slight, it’s concerns too narrow. At the risk of sounding joyless (too late), it wasn’t worthy.

Martin Amis recently said the J M Coetzee couldn’t write. (This obviously passed the Nobel committee by when they awarded him the prize for Literature). He’s retracted the comment and apologized. The original point, lost in the furore, was that literature should be fun. Whilst I’m dubious about anything Martin Amis says that isn’t solely an aesthetic call (and even then I reserve judgement) this makes absolute sense in the light of his reverence for Jane Austen. Martin Amis is unlikely to read Jane Austen novels for the insight into the inner workings of the middle class drawing rooms of the pseudo-gentry. He reads them because they’re fun. Twenty years later, but not too late, I will swallow my pride, admit my mistake, and agree.

Las Iguanas

Other than a list of our books there’s very little that identifies this site as much to do with our bookclub. I’m hoping this entry will go a little way to addressing this anomaly. It’s not going to be a blow by blow account of the discussion since that’s not really the point of the club - As has been said before it’s really just “an excuse to meet up under a very thin veneer of self-improvement”. But the book will at least get a mention!

There was a full turn out for Persepolis which, given it was a Liverpool outing, was particularly gratifying. It got underway a little later than planned thanks to my legendarily laid back approach to directions – by the time I’d mentioned the turn off to Dom we’d sailed past the exit. As a result we had to pass on the usual pre-dinner drinks. I think this goes some way to explaining the bar bill that wasn’t particularly offset by the “5 for a Tenner” special, or the presence of two abstemious drivers.

In line with tradition the discussion started after the main course with an introduction from the host. The reason for choosing the book can be as simple as “it’s the only one in the shop they had five of” but in this case was decidedly more elaborate, suggested, as it was, by a viewing of the French language film version voiced by Catherine Deneuve (I probably got that horribly wrong) Whatever the motivation it was a reasonably well received choice but I think it’s fair to say it didn’t particularly ignite any passions.

We always allow the dust to settle before scoring the book. Although it wasn’t intentional it does allow some “back-pedalling” - I think my score come Monday morning was more reflective of my overall opinion than my contributions that evening were.

That just leaves the “Stats” -
Persepolis ranked 50 / 79 with a Standard Deviation ranking of 4/79 ( Dom can correct me here but I think this measure suggests fairly convergent opinion? )