Video Killed the Jane Austen Star

We talked last week about my recent passion for the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast and my ongoing trip through its back catalog (Today: Ari Shapiro on Miley Cyrus at the VMAs! Relatedly, I would like to register my love for the giant picture of Mr. Shapiro on the NPR Careers website. Work at NPR: We don’t all have faces for radio!). And I got to thinking.

You could say I’m a bit of a podcast junkie. I’ve got your This American Life; I’ve got your RadioLab; I’ve got your Splendid Table; I used to have your Fresh Air, until they changed the format and I fell behind and iTunes gave up. I’ve cried over many episodes of The Tobolowsky Files, with Stephen Tobolowsky, and I’m well-versed in the entire back catalog of the excellent Official LOST Podcast. I regularly listen to a number of podcasts where people discuss knitting for an hour or more, and then I listen to them again, because they’re just that interesting.

What kind of podcast do I NOT listen to? Jane Austen podcasts. That’s because, as far as I can tell, there are none.

Really. I looked. There are podcast episodes about Jane, and versions of her works read aloud, but I didn’t find a single instance of a serial podcast covering all things Jane.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? A complete lack of Jane-oriented podcasts seems implausible to me from any direction.

First of all, we Janeites have a lot to say. Have you seen how many websites we’re able to keep populated? (The Jane-adjacent book review sites alone!) We’re a large community with diverse views on a lot of topics, and it’s not like don’t want to talk about it. It’s completely strange to me that nobody’s regularly switching on the mic to talk Jane, if only to drunkenly MST3K all the movie adaptations. (…Mrs. F and Miss O, I believe I hear our calling calling.)

Second of all, there are podcasts about everything. Did I tell you about the multiple knitting podcasts? There are so many general literary podcasts out there, and so many other podcasts about seemingly un-podcastable topics, that I just can’t believe that Janeites have decided to sit this one out.

So, tell me, readers: Are Google and iTunes lying to me? Do you all know of any Jane Austen podcasts, and do you have any favorites? Hook your Janeite sisters and brothers up!

 

The Jane Flower: On Pianofortes and Bawling Our Eyes Out

People, Jane is following me into some weird places this week! For example:

1. I just finished the Penelope Fitzgerald novel The Blue Flower. We’ve—okay, I’ve—talked about Ms. Fitzgerald and her excellence before; she’s a wonderful writer who seems to get blank looks whenever I bring her up. Anyway, The Blue Flower is a strange little origins story concerning the German Romantic poet Novalis (né Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, or “Fritz”) and his true and deep love for, and subsequent engagement to, the twelve-year-old Sophie von Kühn. And what does  young Fritz give his barely pubescent love as a token of his affection? You guessed it: A PIANOFORTE!

I was, as you can imagine, one excited Austen fan. I was also pretty confused: what did it mean? Was it a secret pianoforte? Was Fitzgerald weaving themes of deception and hidden love into her novel, encouraged by the shadow of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax? Was it all just one big secret message for the Jane-obsessed?

Upon further thought, here is what I believe it means: I think it means Fritz von Hardenberg, a real person who lived in real Germany and fell in love with a real seventh-grader, bought his fiancee a real pianoforte, and Fitzgerald included it in her novel. Which is a little disappointing from an interpretive perspective, but it made me pretty happy anyway.

2. I don’t know if you all listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour, the weekly NPR pop-culture podcast hosted by Linda Holmes ‘n Friends. If you don’t, not to worry: I’m making up for you. As a recent convert, I am systematically listening to ALL OF IT, in reverse order, and it is making my heart sing on a daily basis.

Today, I was listening to the PCHH episode from October 18, 2013, which includes a segment on pop culture that makes us cry, and why. And let me tell you: if you haven’t recently watched (or, in this case, listened to) the scene from the 1995 Sense and Sensibility where Emma Thompson completely loses her cool over Edward Ferrars’s apparent singleness, you should probably do that, possibly in the privacy of your own home, because it is GREAT and also completely deserves its reputation as a tearjerker. Podcast co-host Trey Graham cites it as Teary Moment Prototype #1: people doing the right thing, suffering for it, and later being rewarded for their actions, and if you saw a girl walking, teary-eyed and smiling, along the Embarcadero in San Francisco around lunchtime today, that was, uh, definitely not me. Nope.

Anyway, it’s lovely. (The relevant clip begins around the 30:00 mark in the link above, if you want to hear it.)

Has Jane been following you around this week, readers? Let’s hear it.