Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Jane Austen’s tools are tweezers and a nail file. Tolstoy built cityscapes; Dostoyevsky dug sewer systems; Joyce made funhouses; Kafka put up prisons; Cervantes created carnivals. Austen crafts ivory figurines, incredibly lifelike portraits that fit in the palm of your hand.
When you read Pride and Prejudice you see the novel in its barest form. Her prose has no pyrotechnics, her descriptions have little poetry. Word-play, fantastic events, bizarre characters, cliff-hangers, and elaborate plots are similarly absent. When you read this book you realize that these tools are not only unnecessary, but can distract from the craft of the novel.
In all of the annals of social science—the ethnographies of anthropology, the studies of sociology—there has never been an observer of social life more keen than Ms. Austen. What we have here is one of the best accounts of marriage customs ever written. That information alone would make this book invaluable.
But of course, this is no academic treatise; it is a novel, and a brilliant one at that. Unlike other authors, who use the dialogue to present information about the plot, for Austen the dialogue is the plot. It is a story of information and misunderstanding. Who thinks what, who knows what, who tells what to whom—all form the intimate tapestry of events that propel this book forward to its merry conclusion.
Austen also excels at omitting unnecessary information. She never tells instead of shows. She does not beleaguer the reader with descriptions of personalities, or even of appearances. Descriptions of setting are similarly kept to the barest minimum; in fact, they are almost apologetic.
The scenes of our greatest struggles and triumphs aren’t always aboard a whaling ship or before the gates of Troy. Sometimes they are conversations held over the soft plunking of a piano-forte
Lotz in Translation 