Bitch In a Bonnet Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs the Snobs the Simps and the Saps Volume 1 eBook Robert Rodi
Download As PDF : Bitch In a Bonnet Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs the Snobs the Simps and the Saps Volume 1 eBook Robert Rodi 
Novelist Rodi (Fag Hag, The Sugarman Bootlegs) launches a broadside against the depiction of Jane Austen as a “a woman’s writer…quaint and darling, doe-eyed and demure, parochial if not pastoral, and dizzily, swooningly romantic — the inventor and mother goddess of ‘chick lit.’” Instead he sees her as “a sly subversive, a clear-eyed social Darwinist, and the most unsparing satirist of her century… She takes sharp, swift swipes at the social structure and leaves it, not lethally wounded, but shorn of it prettifying garb, its flabby flesh exposed in all its naked grossness. And then she laughs.” In this volume, which collects and amplifies two-and-a-half years’ worth of blog entries, he combs through the first three novels in Austen’s canon — Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park — with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she’s a romantic of any kind (“Weddings bore her, and the unrelenting vulgarity of our modern wedding industry — which strives to turn each marriage ceremony into the kind of blockbuster apotheosis that makes grand opera look like a campfire sing along — would appall her into derisive laughter”).
“Hilarious…Rodi’s title is a tribute. He’s angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who’s ‘wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist’…Like Rodi, I believe Austen deserves to join the grand pantheon of gadflies Voltaire and Swift, Twain and Mencken.” Lev Raphael, The Huffington Post
Bitch In a Bonnet Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs the Snobs the Simps and the Saps Volume 1 eBook Robert Rodi
I laughed a lot at first. He's right that Austen is mordant as opposed to romantic or Romantic. But he ends up doing her wit a great disservice by constantly comparing some of her most quietly lethal comments to blunt-force contemporary sarcasm that are already dated and that show that his ear for the vernacular isn't all we might wish. ("Beeyotch, are you high," really?)The guy genuinely knows his stuff but once he gets into Pride and Prejudice, he starts to dance around so hard trying to be funny or appeal to youth that he becomes what he and Jane mock, prancing like a poodle, spinning like a top, and peeing all over his own points. In trying to emulate the vernacular of the many genuinely witty contemporary writers, he tosses in the odd hilariously dated pop culture reference and the curiously out of synch odd occasional bit of British slang.
I liked a lot of it but the author needs to step out of Jane Austen's way. Her wit isn't analogous to the blunt instruments that writers today wield in a spirit of pure irony. They are funny and so is she, but in different ways and for different reasons. In fact, she is hilarious and amazing because her characters, though often monsters of ego, are also entirely like real people. Comparing them to cartoon characters, characters in Fellini films, and various modern types completely misses the point. It's ludicrous because her characters are the OPPOSITE of those things.
So I recommend these books to all true Austen fans--though with certain caveats.
B
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Bitch In a Bonnet Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs the Snobs the Simps and the Saps Volume 1 eBook Robert Rodi Reviews
Ultimately this book is not worth it. You can practically hear the author’s sneer at anyone who dares to read Austen for anything other than what he himself reads it for. His only saving grace is how much he clearly loves Jane Austen and her writing, but even that can’t save it from his tediousness or his apparent inability to tell the difference between his own opinions and those of Austen’s. In addition to making wildly inaccurate claims about the author that can be easily proven wrong (claiming she didn’t care about music when she was an accomplished musician who practiced every day, saying she was irreligious when she wrote her own devotions and prayers), he seems incapable of conceiving how anything could ever be in the text if he didn’t pay attention to it.
He gets this most egregiously wrong with Mansfield Park, which he clearly hates so much that he is incapable of actually reading and understanding the words on the page, and instead makes all sorts of bizarre claims about the characters motivations and personalities which have absolutely no basis in their words or actions in the text.
If you also hate Mansfield Park, this might be a book for you, but don’t expect anything deep or even especially accurate.
There are few things as funny as a gay guy on a roll. This book, based on blogs, is overstuffed with crackling comments as well as thoughtful observations. I realize it's incorrect to stereotype gays, but I have been fortunate in having friends who make me laugh until I cry. Reading this is like spending an evening with one of those friends, who have intellect, humor, great powers of observation and a irresistible turn of phrase.
Some of his comments fall flat, but the majority are sharp.There is too much space given to the "Jane Austen is not romantic" thesis. Rodi's commentary is unintelligible to anyone who has not actually read the novel under discussion. And if have read Austen you know she is not Romantic in the bodice-buster style. The other reviews are correct, the commentary on Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice are spot on. Mansfield Park is such a twaddle that it can be forgiven if a reviewer is somewhat off. Amidst the humor there were many close readings by the author that enlightened me, aspects I had overlooked. It's these observations that make this book much more than a comic rant.
This book is like spending an evening with a smart, funny friend who loves Austen.
I would like to give this a much higher rating. Rodi does show signs of understanding literary criticism. That being said, he seems to think his reader is entirely ignorant about Jane Austen. I question his assumption that all of her readers are ignorant romance fans. Personally, I think Austen's ability to write tongue in cheek and her social satire can be perceived by any reasonably intelligent reader. She is accessible, even in the 21st century.
Rodi thinks a great deal of his own capabilities apparently. He seems quite taken with his rather adolescent humor and coarse analogies. Another reviewer mentions his taking the Lord's name in vain. I should have paid attention. How bad could it be? One of his favorite ejaculations is "sweet creeping J---s!" That's his tone.
Lastly, although under coarseness and literary mugging, there is evidence of genuine literary criticism which I am bound to admit. However, his interpretation of Mansfield Park is so bizarre that I felt obliged to re-read the book as I scarcely recognized the characters in his criticism. Rodi makes the very mistake he accuses others of making. That is of viewing a 19th century novel with 21st century eyes. His lambasting of Fanny Price is ridiculous. Read a little more carefully and the clues to her behavior are there. Bringing in slavery in the West Indies is off the mark. Whether or not Sir Thomas had slaves on his Antiguan property is not relevant to the story. He could have been having management problems, crop failure, trade agreements falling apart ... Austen does not specify. Non issue. Divorce in the family? Mary's solution was perfectly practical to Rodi, what's the problem? Early19th century -- adultery and divorce, huge scandals. Image was everything.
I will not be buying volume two.
I laughed a lot at first. He's right that Austen is mordant as opposed to romantic or Romantic. But he ends up doing her wit a great disservice by constantly comparing some of her most quietly lethal comments to blunt-force contemporary sarcasm that are already dated and that show that his ear for the vernacular isn't all we might wish. ("Beeyotch, are you high," really?)
The guy genuinely knows his stuff but once he gets into Pride and Prejudice, he starts to dance around so hard trying to be funny or appeal to youth that he becomes what he and Jane mock, prancing like a poodle, spinning like a top, and peeing all over his own points. In trying to emulate the vernacular of the many genuinely witty contemporary writers, he tosses in the odd hilariously dated pop culture reference and the curiously out of synch odd occasional bit of British slang.
I liked a lot of it but the author needs to step out of Jane Austen's way. Her wit isn't analogous to the blunt instruments that writers today wield in a spirit of pure irony. They are funny and so is she, but in different ways and for different reasons. In fact, she is hilarious and amazing because her characters, though often monsters of ego, are also entirely like real people. Comparing them to cartoon characters, characters in Fellini films, and various modern types completely misses the point. It's ludicrous because her characters are the OPPOSITE of those things.
So I recommend these books to all true Austen fans--though with certain caveats.
B
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