Emma, Katniss, and Me

I have recently started reading Jane Austen’s Emma again. I’m not sure how many times this makes it; I have read all of Jane Austen’s full novels more than once. Emma isn’t even in my top three*, favorites-wise (and there are only six of them, so…), but it is a charming story and worth revisiting. Besides, I felt the need to visit with an old friend.

Photographic evidence that I really, REALLY like Jane Austen.

Some books – some authors – become so inextricably woven into the fabric of your life that they feel like friends, as with my family and Hazel’s warren in Watership Down. Accordingly, when I absence myself from them for too long, I miss them. Each has contributed a little piece (or a large chunk, or several oddly-shaped bits)to my soul, so when I begin to think fondly of one, perhaps ’tis a sign that conversation with this particular friend would be salutary for one R. A. Nelson.

This has certainly proven true with Emma. Part of the motivation for reading it was the fact that some kind friends loaned me a beautiful annotated copy, and I simply could not let such a delicious treat go untasted. In the introduction, the editor – Bharat Tandon – describes Jane Austen’s mastery of “free indirect style”, which “embeds first-person thoughts within third-person grammar, a commingling  of internal and external narrative viewpoints within the same sentence, with the result that there is always some uncertainty in a reader’s mind as to whether certain judgments belong to a character’s private consciousness or to the external perspective of a narrator.”

The idea of an untrustworthy narrator – not an unprincipled person, but rather a character upon whose interpretation of events we cannot always rely  – has always fascinated me. It’s one reason behind my deep appreciation for the Hunger Games trilogy: since those books are written in first-person, we are so firmly trapped in Katniss’s head that we are forced to go along wholly with her understanding of events, only beginning to discern halfway through that her understanding is probably incomplete or warped or just plain wrong.

I wrote the Gatekeeper trilogy in third-person limited, which is closer to “free indirect style” than the chronicle of poor Katniss’s adventures. We are not stuck in Anna’s mind completely (let’s all be thankful for this) – but, as with Emma, the reader cannot suppose him- or herself safe because of this seemingly broader scope of narrative. We still perceive events primarily through the lens of Anna’s understanding; and, as anyone who has reached Chapter 15 in Gatekeeper III: The Keeping knows, that understanding is often incomplete or warped or just plain wrong.

Books written in such style are smashingly fun to read multiple times. Once you know what’s coming, you’re able to detect glimpses of the true interpretation of events along the way, and you can trace where the narrator’s understanding veered slightly – or, as in chapter 15, leapt completely off the rails.

British road signs – or, in this case, river signs – are fun.

For me, reading Emma’s thoughts with the end already known (many times over), I find myself chuckling inwardly: “Oh no, dear heart. No no no no no. Just wait a couple hundred pages.”

And, as I’m laughing at dear Emma, I suddenly realize that I am laughing at myself. Am I not guilty of just such a conceited tendency towards my own interpretation of events and the people in them? Is not that interpretation often – to my cost – incomplete, or warped, or just plain wrong? Chapter 15 in Gatekeeper III was uncomfortably familiar terrain for me to navigate as a writer. Anna and Emma – and, yes, darling Katniss – are all solemn reminders to us not to become too attached to our own understanding, and to greet other people with the openness of a mind that is certain only of how much it has still to learn.

Jane Austen has proved herself an invaluable friend once again.

Sometimes, the prospect of renewing such a friendship can be difficult to face. Old friends can be painful reminders – either of our own former awkwardness and transgressions, or of former happiness, made bitter in contrast with current woe. Or, the reluctance could be more “practical”: whenever I contemplate picking up an old beloved book, the “Do More” voice pipes up, sounding ominously close to Gollum: “No time, silly! Must go! Must read ALL the NEW things, precious – the things precious will never, ever have time for anyway!”

Opening Emma felt like waste – wanton, beautiful, necessary waste. Every chapter is another kick to the “Do More” voice’s bony rear end. Even if I hadn’t already been inspired with the thoughts recorded above, visiting an old friend is never, ever useless. It reminds me of who I used to be, and who I hoped – and still hope – to become.

So I shall continue wasting time with Emma, and Lizzy Bennet, and Catherine Morland. I shall “frivol” with Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, and I shall sit down to feasts in Redwall Abbey. I shall wander through the moorlands with Jane Eyre, and through tesseracts with Meg and Charles Wallace, and through Narnia with the Pevensies and Eustace and Jill. I shall scold Wizard Howl, fly with Hiccup and Toothless, put a comforting arm ’round Katniss (if she’ll let me), and laugh hysterically with Percy and Annabeth and Leo. I shall dream blithely with Anne Shirley, and I shall grow painfully with Cal Trask. And I shall keep Lord of the Rings (the unabridged audiobook) on repeat in my car, walking the same long road with Frodo and Sam – ever, ever on, now and for always.

I leave you, once again, with a quote from C. S. Lewis, the man responsible for approximately one-third of the oddly shaped pieces that form my soul:

“An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books once only. There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristam Shandy or Shakespeare’s Sonnets: but what can you do with a man who says he ‘has read’ them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that settles the matter.”

*For those wondering what my top three Austens are, I would say: Pride & Prejudice (I know that makes me like everyone else, but it’s too darn good for me to try to affect a superior inimitability), Mansfield Park (the first Austen book I read without seeing a film version first – that makes a difference, friends), and Northanger Abbey (my most recent “favorite”, as my growing self-awareness has revealed a certain kinship with the intensely imaginative Catherine Morland, and my growth as an author has fed a deep appreciation for the intense self-consciousness of Austen’s writing in this, her first novel).