So, intense fandom is just interesting, right? I never thought about till now, but there are lots of fandoms I find far more interesting than the thing they fan. I will never go to an Insane Clown Posse show, but I love hearing about my co-worker’s Gathering of the Juggaloes experiences. I am utterly uninterested in sports, but I have surprisingly strong opinions about best and worst fans (Best: I’m partial to University of Texas fans, who will cheer for a good play by the other team (so long as UT is winning). Worst: All Philadelphia and Penn State fans). Because it’s about passion and joy and connection and validation… literally the bestest things. In short, even if I weren’t interested in Jane Austen’s books, I still would have enjoyed this fun, light-hearted romp among the Janeites (Janealloes?).
Each chapter loosely explores a different aspect of fandom, like fan fiction, Regency fashion, tours around Austen’s homes or using the novels as a mental health intervention. Author Deborah Yaffe has immense luck and skill in finding the right characters to carry the chapters. In an early chapter about Sandy Lerner, one of the inventors / founders of Cisco Systems and later Urban Decay Cosmetics (!) who buys Austen’s brother’s crumbling mansion and turns it into Chawton House Library, a space dedicated to the study of women’s writing from 1600 to 1830, I thought, “Ooh, how lucky to have found this character! I would read a book about her alone!” In the very next chapter, we meet Linda and Pamela, two amateur fan fiction writers who are equally fascinating (Pamela, who rewrites Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of Mr. Darcy, is the heroine of the loveliest real life romance I’ve ever read). This happened over and over… either all Janeites are universally interesting (they’re not… I’m proof!) or Yaffe is just incredibly good at finding good people with good stories.
My (cold, snobbish) heart was warmed by Yaffe’s tolerant, welcoming take on fan fiction. I would have harrumphed over how badly written these books are, but she takes them on their own terms, as a fellow fan:
“Oh, it wasn’t like reading Jane Austen, of course – where Austen’s novels were richly complex, exquisitely satisfying confections, most of these books were Twinkies. The writing varied from excellent to execrable, the pacing and plotting were frequently amateurish, the temptation to substitute melodrama (war! murder! international drug smuggling!) for Austen’s psychological nuance seemed ever-present, but the exuberant silliness was irresistible. Who doesn’t feel like devouring a Twinkie from time to time?… Many [of these writers] seemed to be genuine fans driven by their unwillingness to say goodbye to Austen’s characters on the final pages of her all-too-short, all-too-few novels.”
I also enjoyed her description of how fandom has changed in the wake of the internet… we all felt alone and isolated and weird, then if we were lucky, in college or adulthood, we found our little group, then, in the mid-90s, the internet happened and we were connected with everyone in the world who loved what we loved (“From dueling to tweeting in a single morning, such is the Janeite world in the early twenty-first century, sixteen years after Mr. Darcy donned a wet shirt just as digital technology was creating a virtual space where we could all talk about it”). This is not always a positive (“I wish fewer people liked Jane Austen, I think crossly, as I thread my way through the other tourists crowding the low-ceilinged rooms of Chawton Cottage,”) but overall, who doesn’t want to find their crowd of like-minded, passionate weirdos, to dress up with or sing with or dance with… or write book reviews with 😊
