Are you a Nazi? Let Jane Austen fix that for you.

[Pickman's model]

Whatever the weirdness & probably racistness of this judgement , the idea that reading (good) fiction increases your capacity for empathy is pretty much proven i think.

But also , about half of the Uk’s prison population are ‘functionally illiterate’, forcing people to read Victorian novels isn’t necessarily the answer.

1) canonical fiction is not necessarily good fiction. things like austen, dickens etc aren't there because they're really good but because some (mainly white and middle class) people have decided they're good. it's not like nineteenth century fiction was limited to what's now available in oxford world classics or penguin classics, for every barnaby rudge there were another 20 novels published.

2) austen isn't victorian and shakespeare wasn't even nineteenth century. thomas hardy's 'jude the obscure', now considered a classic, was so reviled by the victorian public that it was the last novel hardy ever wrote, tho he lived another 33 years.

 

[bimble]

Yes.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

1) canonical fiction is not necessarily good fiction. things like austen, dickens etc aren't there because they're really good but because some (mainly white and middle class) people have decided they're good. it's not like nineteenth century fiction was limited to what's now available in oxford world classics or penguin classics, for every barnaby rudge there were another 20 novels published.

2) austen isn't victorian and shakespeare wasn't even nineteenth century. thomas hardy's 'jude the obscure', now considered a classic, was so reviled by the victorian public that it was the last novel hardy ever wrote, tho he lived another 33 years.

Better watch out or they'll have you up before the beak for contempt.

 

[Pickman's model]

Better watch out or they'll have you up before the beak for contempt.

my life has been immeasurably improved by never having read jane austen. or thomas hardy, for that matter.

 

[JimW]

We did Return of the Native at school, remember thinking people were a lot more patient back in its days as I struggled through two page descriptions of Egdon Heath, but seem to recall it had some good bits. Looked at some of his poems once and thought they were awful but IIRC their reputation has improved since.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

I read Return of the Native at school as well. Before that I was a neo-Nazi, but then I saw the light. (It was black and red).

 

[Santino]

Jane Austen wrote some excellent books. Slavery is bad. Dickens wrote some excellent books. People should be empowered but not forced to read a wide range of literature. The British state is institutionally racist.

 

[JimW]

I read Return of the Native at school as well. Before that I was a neo-Nazi, but then I saw the light. (It was black and red).

Now you come to mention it, never been attracted to fascism. Perhaps Hardy is a prophylactic too?

 

[planetgeli]

Another one for did the Return of the Native. What JimW said. Jude the Obscure is better. Class politics.

All prisoners should have a free kindle or whatever. All paid for. All that get smashed up get replaced immediately. Always. It's called rehabilitation. Literacy classes go without saying.

Jane Austen could be blocked.

 

[JimW]

The one classic I read as it came out top in some Guardian article was George Elliot's Middlemarch (plus it was free for the Kindle and English books were hard to come by here then) and I really did enjoy it; bourgeois concerns of course but fantastically drawn characters and even liked the spiritual bits. Though I do have a terrible memory for books I've read so might be mixing it up with something else other than definitely remember liking it.

 

[Raheem]

The title of Return of the Native should at least pique his interest.

 

[likesfish]

Imagine how all this feels to the Muslim men (and their loved ones) currently imprisoned in the UK on similar charges. What a message this sends!

Nazis haven't gone stab happy at randoms recently if they had the sentence would be much harsher.

 

[hitmouse]

What's wrong with Dostoyevsky? Anna Karenina is about as good as literature gets. He should have included that in the sentence tbh

Iirc, at the end of Dostoyevsky's stupid dogshit book Crime and Punishment

Spoiler

Raskolnikov reads the Bible and is like "oh I suppose I will be a good person now ".

Perhaps the judge might have been thinking of that.

F Scott Fitzgerald suits long sentences - I got three pages into The Great Gatsby without the merest hint that a full stop was headed balefully in my direction to relieve me of my torment.

The whole book's only about four pages long, you lightweight!

The one classic I read as it came out top in some Guardian article was George Elliot's Middlemarch (plus it was free for the Kindle and English books were hard to come by here then) and I really did enjoy it; bourgeois concerns of course but fantastically drawn characters and even liked the spiritual bits. Though I do have a terrible memory for books I've read so might be mixing it up with something else other than definitely remember liking it.

I was going to say "oh yeah, I think I liked Middlemarch as well but I can't remember it that clearly either" but then I remembered I was thinking of Buddenbrooks. Books with one-word titles that have internal alliteration are the same.

Anyway, maybe it's a bit live laugh love of me, but I always liked that Baldwin quote about "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people." Even if he did inexplicably think Dostoevsky was good.

 

[BillRiver]

Nazis haven't gone stab happy at randoms recently if they had the sentence would be much harsher.

Neither have most of the Muslim men imprisoned on terrorism charges in the UK.

 

[killer b]

Mrs B's summer task has been to read all the books of George Elliot, in order. She's on Middlemarch now and says it's the best book she's ever read.

 

[steveseagull]

 

[two sheds]

Mrs B's summer task has been to read all the books of George Elliot, in order. She's on Middlemarch now and says it's the best book she's ever read.

She got found guilty of something?

 

[Pickman's model]

Iirc, at the end of Dostoyevsky's stupid dogshit book Crime and Punishment

Spoiler

Raskolnikov reads the Bible and is like "oh I suppose I will be a good person now ".

Perhaps the judge might have been thinking of that.

looking at most people who might be expected to have some familiarity with the bible, it is notable how few of them are good people

 

[hitmouse]

the judge's approach to sentencing was by the book

Well, no-one's disputing that bit.

 

[RubyToogood]

All these people who think Jane Austen is shit have never read any of her books.

It also comes across as quite sexist.

 

[MickiQ]

Never read any Jane Austen, I did however watch the 1995 TV show and thought it was brilliant and god knows how many times it has been filmed or inspired ripoffs (not all of them British). The novel was written in 1813 yet it is still being widely read and adapted to media, its author never conceived of so its claim to being classic literature seems pretty solid to me.
Dubious it will be of much value as a means of penal reform though.

 

[killer b]

it's the same almost every time there's some outrage about a judge egregiously letting someone off - once someone digs in to what actually happened, it turns out it was actually a by the book sentencing with some weird or off-beam sentencing remarks.

 

[bimble]

It also comes across as quite sexist.

Yep. especially when some of the same people inexplicably think that charles dickens is anything but a tawdry waste of time.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yep. especially when some of the same people inexplicably think that charles dickens is anything but a tawdry waste of time.

if dickens hadn't been paid by the word then his books would be much better. as it is, what could be really good, gripping stories suffer from a surfeit of sentences.

 

[two sheds]

if dickens hadn't been paid by the word then his books would be much better. as it is, what could be really good, gripping stories suffer from a surfeit of sentences.

Remember reading about a writer of Westerns who got asked why his baddies always got killed with the sixth bullet - bang bang bang bang bang bang - he was paid by the word, too.

 

[Pickman's model]

It also comes across as quite sexist.

i don't see how. i've cheerfully read books by lots of other women writers, eg marie correlli, george eliot, dorothy macardle and c.l. moore. the only three authors i have no interest in reading are virginia woolf and jane austen and thomas hardy. and it's got nothing to do with two of them being women.

 

[Calamity1971]

bang bang bang bang bang

Sounds like a Jilly cooper.

 

[two sheds]

I'll take your word for that

 

[RubyToogood]

Yep. especially when some of the same people inexplicably think that charles dickens is anything but a tawdry waste of time.

TBF Dickens is a lot more about the politics of capitalism etc. Jane Austen's world is a total vacuum.

 

[bimble]

TBF Dickens is a lot more about the politics of capitalism etc. Jane Austen's world is a total vacuum.

you're just wrong. but i'm not up for a fight about it just now.