“You think Philip Roth is better than Jane Austen? You’re crazy,” said one attendee at a meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Southwest chapter this weekend.
Jane Austen
Public domain / en.wikipedia.org
Just before 8:30 a.m. at the University of Southern California on Saturday, Liz Philosophos Cooper carried three big bags across campus. To anyone aware of the Jane Austen Society of North America's southwest regional winter meeting, it was clear where the woman in tights was going. Cooper is JASNA's vice president, and she would later morph into Pride and Prejudice's Caroline Bingley, complete with feathery headdress.
Those in attendance for the meeting were mostly women (though I counted five men), a few of whom were in Regency costume, but mostly, they were just really excited about Jane Austen.
"It's a bright group," said Jaye Scholl Bohlen, a JASNA-SW board member. "If you say that she published Pride and Prejudice in 1811, hands'll go up because everybody knows it was published in 1813."
Those at the meeting didn't care how you came to love Jane Austen or whether Colin Firth had some role in your love; they only cared that you loved her. (And maybe that you knew she published Pride and Prejudice in 1813.) Bohlen said she's wholly unapologetic about Austen's genius.
"You think Philip Roth is better than Jane Austen? You're crazy."
Liz Philosophos Cooper
Ariane Lange / BuzzFeed
Seeing as 2013 marked the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice's publication, the talks at the JASNA-SW winter meeting revolved around the novel's "characters we love to hate," including the arguable choice of Charlotte Lucas, Elizabeth Bennet's homely best friend.
Pride and Prejudice was JASNA President-elect Claire Bellanti's first brush with Austen's work. She initially read it in college and started "rereading it every year as a Christmas present for myself," she explained. "It's a delight every time."
This self-perpetuating enthusiasm for Austen was everywhere at USC's Town & Gown in downtown L.A. "Whenever my husband and I are sick, we turn on Jane Austen," said Annemarie Thomas, an artist and former graphic designer who brought a number of her paintings with her. One was of Austen's church, another was based on a drawing of what might've been Austen's house, but most were stacks of Austen books.
