Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict
by Laurie Viera Rigler
List Price: $14.00
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780452289727
Publisher: Plume
When not indulging herself in rereadings of Jane Austen’s six novels, Laurie Viera Rigler is a freelance book editor who teaches writing workshops, including classes at Vroman’s, Southern California’s oldest and largest independent bookstore. Laurie lives in Los Angeles and is a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America.
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A Conversation with Laurie Viera Rigler
Q. Why did you choose Jane Austen’s world as the inspiration for your novel?
LVR: Despite my fascination (or let’s be honest, obsession) with all those period details, what really draws me to Jane Austen is that she does, in fact, transcend time. Her all-seeing, all-knowing, take-no-prisoners approach to the follies and flaws of human beings makes her books not only timeless but almost eerily contemporary, despite the bonnets and balls and carriages. It is as if she were a modern-day psychotherapist with a wicked sense of humor who time-traveled back to the Regency and wrote novels about everyone who spent time on her couch.
Q. Why are you, and so many others, “Austen addicts”?
LVR: Because the more I read Jane Austen’s six novels, the more I discover about myself and human nature in general. In fact, the Austen canon equates to the best self-help book you could ever have in your library. Feeling self-important? Read Jane Austen. In the midst of an identity crisis? Perhaps, like me, you’ll find a little of yourself in all her heroines. Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland, who is addicted to scary novels, dancing, and old houses, reminds me of who I was when I lived in a crumbling Victorian that was said to be haunted, or when I could spend all night in after-hours clubs and still make it to work by nine. Sense and Sensibility’s Marianne Dashwood, she of the tear-rimmed eyes and self-destructive tendencies, is who I was when consuming little more than espresso and Big Gulp-size vodka martinis, and American Spirits was my idea of post-breakup nourishment. Emma is who I am when I get lost in the land of running-your-life-is-so-much-better-than-looking-at-my-own. I still wish I were as eloquent a smartass as Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet, but the more I venture into the minefield of self-reflection, the more I appreciate Austen’s less incendiary heroines: the quietly steadfast Anne Eliot of Persuasion, and even the iconically timid Fanny Price of Mansfield Park, whom I used to dismiss as a prude.
Q. How did your obsession with reading and rereading Austen’s novels lead to writing a novel yourself?
LVR: For me it was an inevitable outcome. I can never get enough of Jane Austen’s six novels, or of the veritable banquet of Austen-inspired movies. There’s Colin Firth fencing and working up a sweat in the BBC’s 1996 Pride and Prejudice, Matthew MacFadyen smoldering in the 2005 version, and Lost’s swoonworthy Naveen Andrews in the Bollywood version. If there were fifty adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, I’d see them all. I’d buy them all. I’d play them all till they started skipping and I had to buy a new one.
After all, I am insatiable. Which is why I started writing Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. I could feed my cravings by creating a story of a twenty-first-century party girl who wakes up in the body and life of a woman in Jane Austen’s time. Now, that’s what I call an identity crisis. That’s what I call the perfect excuse to immerse myself in the world of my favorite author.
This book, however, grew into a more complex personal journey than I could have imagined. I found myself exploring fundamental questions of identity, destiny, and the nature of time, such as: Can I really be who I think I am if everyone around me thinks I’m someone else? How big a role does free will play in our destiny? And is time really linear, or is there another way to look at it? These are things that are worth pondering, even if one doesn’t wake up in Regency England.
Q. How did you research your novel? And what does B.B. King have to do with Jane Austen?
LVR: I read everything I could find on the period, and I traveled. I went to London, to Bath, to little country villages frozen in time. I went to the Assembly Rooms where Anne Eliot longed to catch Captain Wentworth’s eye. I went to conjure the past through the lens of my twenty-first-century protagonist’s mind. While searching for articles on the Internet, I also stumbled across a bunch of Jane-centric groups and fansites. (Apparently there were people as addicted to Austen as I was.) The only group I joined was JASNA, the Jane Austen Society of North America. I never thought of myself as much of a joiner, but they were a scholarly group whose publications were food for my research. Or so I reasoned. So what if some of them liked to dress in period costumes for their annual Regency ball? Was that so wrong? Wouldn’t I like to don an empire-waisted muslin and learn English country dancing and pretend I was Gwyneth Paltrow dancing with Jeremy Northam? The very thought was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.
No, I decided, there was no reason for me to actually attend a JASNA meeting, not even when they blew into LA. for their annual confab. Truth is, I was afraid of being in a room with other people who were not only as obsessed with Austen as I am, but who also had no problem labeling themselves as such. Might it not be like going to an AA meeting and admitting publicly I had a problem? Like my protagonist, I didn’t know if I was ready for that.
My husband, however, insisted I go. Alone.
After willing myself through the glass doors of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown LA and down the grand columned and chandeliered hallway, I made my way to the JASNA registration table. The women at the table were all giddy about B.B. King, who had apparently just passed by, caught sight of the sign, and said, “Jane Austen! I love Jane Austen!” Thrilled, they gave him a tote bag.
Picturing the blues legend carrying around a canary yellow bag emblazoned with the JASNA acronym, it suddenly hit me: If B.B. King could love Jane Austen publicly, couldn’t I?
And so I came out of the Janeite closet that weekend. I went to every talk and lecture I could, short of cloning myself so that I could attend three at once. I took English country dance lessons and danced every dance at the ball. Most of all, I met a lot of wonderful people who love to read Jane Austen. Over and over again. And my world’s a better place because of it.
© Copyright 2009 by Laurie Viera Rigler. Reprinted with permission by Plume. All rights reserved.
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