The Jane Austen Remedy by Ruth Wilson

Author:Ruth Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2022-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

Reading this again twenty years later, I think of the advice given by Jane Austen to a novel-writing niece: ‘You are now collecting your People delightfully … 3 or 4 families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on—& I hope you will do a great deal more, & make full use of them while they are so very favourably arranged.’

Austen’s is not precisely the advice that Dessaix offers, but it is similarly succinct—a confident message about how best to wrap social relationships in stories about people—and it is offered by a master craftsperson.

My interview with Phillip Adams took place in his large townhouse, surrounded by an impressive collection of archaeological artefacts. The broadcaster’s greeting was warm and welcoming. A celebrity presenter, Adams referred to himself as ‘a dilettante’ who embarks nightly on prolonged conversations with high-profile subjects about their ideas. Re-reading his answers to my questions, I notice that what he thinks matters about an interview often matches with what I have thought matters about Jane Austen. He speaks of the importance of voice, the spoken voice that I regard as a key to entering Austen’s fictional world. He emphasises the importance of tone, the warp and weft of playfulness and intimacy that create a special bond between interviewer and interviewee, as they do between writer and reader. He discards the possibility of authority and courts irreverence. ‘I regard it as a great success if I can get people with whom I’m discussing something of immense seriousness to laugh. It doesn’t diminish the seriousness of the discussion, but it makes it more human, more accessible.’ Jane Austen would probably agree; Elizabeth Bennet certainly would.

In her interview for my book, Jana Wendt spoke about ‘ordinary’ conversations that precede the ‘extraordinary’ conversations that take place on air. She was then a current affairs interviewer and presenter who moved for reasons of principle from her high-status position as a commercial star interviewer to a smaller space in public broadcasting. She expressed the view that the conversations are best when they combine emotional relaxation with intellectual stimulation. Here, Wendt connects with Jane Austen. She draws together two contradictory notions, relaxation and stimulation, in her interview conversation, and for me that’s as good a way as any to describe the mood and tone in which the heroine of Northanger Abbey walks and talks with her new-found friends.

My book was published to some acclaim. It was featured in colour on the front page of the Media Supplement of The Australian newspaper and a double spread of excerpts from the book appeared inside. Such is the uncertainty of publishing that the initial flurry of interest was not reflected in the sales. To my mortification, I saw several copies remaindered for two dollars in a less-prestigious Bowral bookshop than Nancy’s just two years after it was published.

§

When I was sixteen, the same age as Catherine Morland, I lived in and for the present. But like other girls of her age, I had great expectations for the future.

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