A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter Paperback – April 24, 2012

Aside from the cover artwork for this book, featuring the clothing of a paper doll man (entirely inappropriate to the seriousness of the subject matter), I consider this one of the most important books I've ever read.Besides explaning the phenomenon of Jane Austen in fresh, new ways, the book also lets the reader, as the author bares his soul, live with Deresiewicz a short period in the first several decades of his life. He had been stuck in the immaturity from which many 21st century young people suffer, and from which many older folks never do manage to make their exit.For a real graduate school course and its real and gifted professor, the author begins--against all previous instincts--to read Jane Austen. He notices that Austen broke all the conventional author rules. Her hidden way of teaching what she wanted her readers to learn by means of her characters and her subtle commentary on them was what brought Deresiewicz finally to know himself and understand why his relations with real people in his life weren't working very well.To learn from this book, the reader needs a prior acquaintance with at least a few of the Jane Austen novels. The reader is taken back and forth between the author's excellent analysis of Austen's work to the life of Deresiewicz himself and how, as he reads Jane Austen, he begins to change his attitudes toward people, toward matrimony, and a host of other things that plague people in any century. Deresiewicz comes to see that he can stay in his safe, bungled, depressed life or grow by listening and more objectively studying the everyday folks around him, even as Austen did. He begins to do this once he has absorbed certain key values that the reading of Austen novels has taught him.Anyone who loves Jane Austen in her printed works (and not just in the movies and stories that are spin-offs from them) should profit from this unusual book. It began reminding me somewhat of Tuesdays with Morrie and that author's professor, but it is definitely a unique life journey aided by the tutelege of a classic author from the late 1700's/early 1800s in England.Jane Austen changed Deresiewicz; in turn, Deresiewicz is changing me.

Many men, including me, grew up believing that Jane Austen's six novels are "chick lit", stories that really can only be enjoyed by or appeal to women, and, like William Deresiewicz, the author of "A Jane Austen Education", I avoided Jane Austen like the plague. In the mid-1990's, when the Colin Firth - Jennifer Ehle version of Pride & Prejudice came out on television as a mini-series, I (surprisingly, I suppose) watched each night with my wife and two daughters and our German exchange student -- and, as a result, became a fan -- certainly of the actors in that mini-series, if not Austen herself. From that introduction to the story, I began reading the books themselves, and began to see, particularly in how she drew the characters, that she had much to teach me. Deresiewicz had a similar experience: he was assigned to read "Emma" as a part of his graduate studies.In "A Jane Austen Education", Deresiewicz reveals how he began to see himself in the characters in Austen's books -- and realized that he was not nearly so fascinating and smart as he thought he was. Austen's "simple stories" were not simple at all, he started to see, nor were they just for women: they were incredibly rich, thought-provoking and, in many ways, like a mirror. Of his seven chapters -- six for each of the Austen novels, and a short final one entitled "The End of the Story" -- I thought the first three -- dealing with "Emma", "Pride & Prejudice" and "Northanger Abbey" were his best -- or at least they spoke to me most clearly.Deresiewicz' prose is often rich and memorable; there is much wisdom here (which he would certainly credit to Jane Austen). The only weakness (to me, at least) in the book was that it almost seemed that Austen was Deresiewicz' only teacher as he became an adult. Surely there were other authors who helped him see his immaturity, though I recognize that for many who love literature, there is often one author, above all others, who is the master teacher. Jane Austen is certainly a worthy choice.

Excellent insight into all 6 Jane Austen novels

Very interesting take on the intersection of life and literature. Well written.

William Deresiewicz nous fait découvrir les plus grands romans de Jane Austen en analysant les enseignements que l'on peut en tirer sur les tous les sujets de formation de l'Homme. Bel exercice de lecture analytique qui se lit fort plaisamment. Idéal pour ceux que la lecture de Jane Austen rebuterait ou bien à ceux qui souhaitent obtenir un nouveau regard sur l'oeuvre. Sans être passionnée de l'artiste, on sortira de la lecture avec une meilleur connaissance de soi et des rapports humains.