It was one of the most erotic things I ever heard. A man I know said he was reading all the novels of Jane Austen in one summer.
At first, I figured he was pretending to like things that women like to seem simpatico, a feminist hustle. But no, this guy really wanted to read “Northanger Abbey.”
How does she know what this guy wants?! Maybe he's good at pretending. Maybe he wants it as a means to an end and it's the end that is really wanted. He wants you to think that he wants what you want him to want.
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73 comments:
Why not? Maybe he knows Austen is a great and entertaining writer and he has neglected her. It's a dumb idea, to my way of thinking, because it is too much of a good thing. But they are certainly not mere chick-lit, whatever that may be, exactly.
PS Link goes back to your blog.
PPS More evidence of Dowd's poor judgment and stereotyped thinking.
Thanks for the early MTV banger, Althouse.
I'm still a boy and I like it. I haven't read Jane Austen but I think I've known her in real life.
Somehow it fits. Dowd thinks “erotic” is a man reading Jane Austen. Is there no end to the fatuous bullshit emanating from the NYT?
No man can read Jane Austen
My post at 10:31 is not intended to demean Jane Austen who was a great talent. Oh! No! Get away, Maureen!
Wait. What the hell happened to my 10:31 post?
Maureen Dowd is a whacked out leftie who is without a man.
Just like Jaguar, why are people like Dowd and others insisting that masculinity must = gayness? Why?
Every single effing time these people open their mouths about masculinity it must be about a concept of masculinity that 99.999999999% most men wouldn't endorse. Is it not blazingly obvious yet?
Reading Austen is reading Austen. It's got nothing to do with anything, at least not until Dowd decided to process words to that effect, so why? Where is this coming from? I want a ticket to view the hive-mind-jormungand that is issuing these orders so that men can stab it to death and kill it with fire, because every swinging dick has had enough of this.
Here it is (10:31): Somehow it fits. Dowd thinks “erotic” is a man reading Jane Austen. Is there no end to the fatuous bullshit emanating from the NYT?
Maureen missed out on Michael Douglas! Wall Street! Romancing the Stone! He certainly dumped her.
The sad thing: no kids.
Look, I bow to no one in my admiration of Ms. Austin's talents as an novelist, and have enjoyed her work for many, many years.
I didn't read any of it until it was introduced to me by my bride, but now consider reading them some of the greatest pleasures in life.
However, I suspect that Ms. Dowd is misdiagnosing her erotic feelings, and suggest she see her gyno ASAP.
Dowd thinks “erotic” is a man reading Jane Austen.
Yeah. She knows what men like. Sex. That's why she's using erotic in a sentence that's insane.
Women often use sex to manipulate men to do things for them. That was actually a funny line in Dead Poets Society. Why do we read poetry? To woo women!
So a man might be reading Jane Austen in an attempt to woo women. (Or understand women, as Austen is an amazing writer). But nobody reads Austen for the sex. There isn't any!
I suspect Maud of using her column to try to flirt with the man who told her that he was reading Austen.
Maybe he wants it as a means to an end and it's the end that is really wanted. He wants you to think that he wants what you want him to want.
Now that’s a skilled playa!
- Krumhorn
Link fixed. Sorry.
If this isn't like most book braga ("Look at my shelves!) , he wants to have read all of the artist's work so that he can comment on it or at least say he read it all.
How would you like it? (You can trust me)
Sucker, mmm
RIP, Patty Donahue. Those lung darts got her.
For me, Jane was tough to read. But the films based upon her novels are pretty amazing across the board. My favorite is Pride and Prejudice with Keira. Outstanding.
Is it possible to write about Jane Austen without mentioning that "it is a truth universally acknowledged"?
Mark Twain hated Austen and Rex Stout thought she was the best writer in human history. Personally I had to do the cinema shortcut, as I bailed early on the literature. (She talks about class, a lot, and if you have any democratic instincts at all, her assumptions will annoy you).
I'm thinking back to Maureen Dowd's "It's Curtains" op-ed back when Maureen was not a fan of Hillary and she bravely show-cased it. Tho - I bet she got a talking-to from the higher ups at NYT(D).
The waitresses - major cringe.
I called Dowd "Maud" at 10:41. That was an unintentional nickname, but kinda funny.
Northanger Abbey is amusing, and contains a fine description of a used car salesman, but Mansfield Park is the bee's knees.
The quality of Dowd's name-dropping is not strained. They fall as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.
google things I did not know:
"Patty Donahue was the lead singer of the American new wave group The Waitresses in the 1980s. She died of lung cancer in 1996 at the age of 40 and is buried in Ohio."
I want to be left alone. Is that on the menu?
"You can/trust me... Sucker, hehehe
Start of the video not a good look.
Patty Donahue, the lead singer of The Waitresses, died of lung cancer on December 9, 1996, at the age of 40. She was a heavy smoker throughout her adult life, and her smoking habit was linked to the lung cancer that ultimately took her life.
I wouldn't read Maya Lou Angelou if I was the horniest man on Earth and, by doing so, I could get laid by Miss Sweeney. I haven't read Down in decades since I stopped reading print newspapers in the 90s. I did, however, start writing poetry in high school and that got me my first real GF.
Maureen Dowd seems to not know what men want. I've never read Jane Austen, but I own almost all the film adaptations of her works. I also own the film adaptations of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Never read Charlotte Brontë since HS in the late 60s.
I’ve read all of Austen’s books because she’s a great writer and also funny (unlike Dowd). “Persuasion” is one of her best.
No dude is reading Jane Austin to get some strange trim. There's easier ways.
He could have just watched the movie, 'Ruby in Paradise'. But lay in a stock of Prozac if he does.
Or perhaps he just wants to read up on the modernity gender relations in those novels since modernity is now gone wide and the environment of Jane Austen's books is now just how dating is in 2025
Ruby in Paradise is a 1993 film written and directed by Victor Nunez, starring Ashley Judd, Todd Field, Bentley Mitchum, Allison Dean, and Dorothy Lyman. An homage to Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, the film is a character study about a young woman who escapes her small town in Tennessee for a new life in coastal Florida. The film marks Judd’s first starring role.
I read several of Austen's novels back in the early 1990s but it never got me laid. It never crossed my mind that it could with a certain demographic.
I'm in the middle of re-reading the Aubrey/Maturin Chronicles by Patrick O'Brian. If ever that Janes Austen Naval Officer brother Admiral William Austen had taken pen to paper these books are what he might have written. The vernacular and speaking patterns are exactly so. And, the series from a male point of view are so much more fun. It does take a while to comphrehend late 18th century syntax and sentence formulations... Dr Stephen Maturin is a beloved character and the story of his friendship with Naval Officer Jack Aubrey is an amazing turn of the 18th century read.
"You mean you forgot cranberries too ..."
*
Jane Austen broke into popular culture in the 1990s. Since then she's been mashed up into the existing popular tradition of Regency Romance. So in the Keri Russell movie "Austenland," Keri's a fan who doesn't get Austen's sharp satire, but is only looking for romance. The "Janeites" of the 1940s and 1950s would be appalled at how easily their cult was merged into the mass culture they despised.
*
I always thought that not ending up saddled with Michael Douglas was dodging a bullet, especially when his odious father was still around, but to each his/her own.
I read several of Austen's novels back in the early 1990s but it never got me laid. It never crossed my mind that it could with a certain demographic.
As an English major in college and a reader of Austen in that time, I would argue it's possible, but you're likely to find more promising demographics elsewhere on a college campus.
Is there some good reason the comment section cannot have "like" and "reply" buttons? I find it difficult scrolling up and down to follow posts and responses.
Don't men read Austen to laugh at our (female) neighbors and make sport for them in our turn?
A good compromise for men and women is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
As men routinely fail to adequately estimate the degree to which women are in competition with each other; many women simply never comprehend the degrees to which men will go for access to preferred vagina. In the vernacular of McMurtry’s Gus McRae, “a man who won’t cheat for a poke, doesn’t want one bad enough.” Spoiler for the insufficiently literate - Gus gets his poke.
My life is rich and full of joy, despite never having read Austen, heard of The Waitresses, or seen a Tarantino flick newer than Jackie Brown. (Or maybe it's 'because of,' not 'despite'.)
The thing I like about Jane Austen is that you can knock off all her books in a weekend. Try that with George Eliot or the Bronte sisters. For a nineteenth century novelist she's extremely pithy.......Jane Austen has far more female fans than Hulk Hogan, and among men it's just the reverse. I think a guy would have better luck with women if he were carrying a Jane Austen novel rather than wearing a Hulk Hogan t-shirt so Dowd, up to a point, is correct.
William's comment about JA as a quick read tempts me to test the waters. My wife has some of the titles around here somewhere.
In my day it would have been far more effective to have read The Greening of America, especially if you also carried around a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book. Fortunately, I was never that desperate.
“RIP, Patty Donahue. Those lung darts got her.”
Yep… saw an interview with some of that band a few years back. They were still pretty torn up about her passing. She was much loved.
I'm a 60 year old guy and I've always thought that reading Jane Austen is about as good as it gets.
William - agree.
Ah Mo Do. One of my college fraternity brothers who came "out" when he was 27 said he learned all he needed to know by reading Jane Austen. Okay he's probably agree with you.
I'm more of a Trollope man myself---with a heavy dose of Patrick O'Brien--but then there you go.
Haven't we concluded that Mo don't really know anything
Skeptical Voter: "I'm more of a Trollope man myself"
As for me, I'm a trollop man....
RR
JSM
Reading “Bridges of Madison County” on a transcontinental flight works.
Those high waisted dresses that bind right under the bust and are long and loose all the way down to the ankles (regency style?) Anyway those dresses are a very flattering look for thin-ish women. I don't think it works for zaftig types.
In a humble tribute to ol’ Kinky, “get yer biscuits in the oven and yer buns in bed”, Mo Dowd!
its a comedy of manners, unlike most things that are churned out by publishers now,
I think the System of the Dowd needs something/anything to relieve her chronic constipation.
h/t Todd Rundgren
Guys want gals, glorious gals. Next mystery.
I read Emma, Pride and Prejudice and.Sense and Sensibility. I liked these books. Not so much the other ones.
.
If I were in need of a list depicting what type of man I'd want to be? I go down Dowd's and do the opposite.
Dowd's never married and has no kids. Why would anyone, especially a man, care what she thinks about male-female relationships. Its like taking marriage advice from Gore Vidal - assuming he was alive.
As a for Jane Austen, I enjoyed P&P and S&S, both of which have satrical and humorous elements. I've been meaning to read "Emma" but haven't got around to it.
I read Northanger Abbey last fall and erotic it isn't.
Maybe she's thrilled & titillated upon discovering a man able to read books and who enjoys it too. One summer in high school i read all of Hemingways novels and one weekend in college I watched all of Woody Allen's films. Sometimes you get in the mood and want to binge.
I read a few of Austen, but it never got me points with the girls. The subject simply never came up. What got me my wife was probably Roger Zelazny. We got talking of Zelazny (Amber, Lord of Light) and she got to talk of running SF conventions and meeting Zelazny. She is a bit of a geek celebrity snob. Granted, she is an uncommon woman.
Unpopular opinion. I found Austin sort of fluff. Nice enough but not worth most of the praise heaped upon her. I read all her stuff in my 40s and it got me nothing more than having done it. I also wanted..... Actually wanted to read her work. Been there done that
Their christmas song is still on the playlist…
Women who dig men who dig Austen cause shrinkage in manly men..:
He wants you to think that he wants what you want him to want.
The Break-Up...
GARY: Fine. I'll help you do the damn dishes.
BROOKE: Oh, come on. You know what? No, see? That's the...that's not what I want.
GARY: You just said you that you want me to help you do the dishes.
BROOKE: I want you to want to do the dishes.
GARY: Why would I want to do dishes? Why?
BROOKE: See, that's my whole point.
Years ago, as a philosophy major at the University of Wisconsin, I got to read a bit of John Austin's "Sense and Sensibilia". At the time I had been unaware of Jane Austen''s similarly titled work.
Reading Austen is easier than learning to play the guitar but not as effective as having generational wealth.
At least he didn't waste the summer reading Dowd.
Jane Austen’s novels are legit good. Guys should be able to recognize that without being accused of pretending to want what she wants him to want.
Jane Austen’s novels are legit good. Guys should be able to recognize that without being accused of pretending to want what she wants him to want.
They are legit good - but why on earth would it turn a woman on that a man is reading them? Much less be the MOST erotic thing she's ever heard?
Now... there was a picture book some years back called something like Porn For Women (this was, let's be fair, a lot of years back, not just "some") that featured muscular men in skimpy banana hammocks doing household chores like vacuuming and washing dishes. That made me giggle. (I still didn't find either the pictures or the concept "erotic.")
MoDo (thinks she) knows what men want. She (thinks she) is/used to be what men want...
Based on the pic (I didn't try to penetrate the pay wall) she pines for men like David Hogg if he can read.
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