There is, at present, a really interesting show on at New York's Morgan Library, "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy." It involves numerous primary sources and altogether presents as complete a portrait as one can realistically find of the famously private novelist. But - and this might stand as a useful metaphor for Austen fandom in general - you can't visit the exhibit without being aurally assaulted by the voices of the pundits in the continuously-playing film The Divine Jane. Although the film is actually in only one corner of the room, the audio - of Fran Lebowitz, Cornel West, and four other "writers, scholars, and actors" talking about her influence on them - is broadcast, loudly, throughout the room as we attempt to read Austen's letters and contemporary ephemera. Fair enough, I guess; some of the quotes are interesting enough and we get it: she has a wide appeal and reach. But this film had exactly nothing to do with Jane Austen's life, and everything to do with these 20th century thinkers ("I fell madly in love with Elizabeth Bennett, and of course I identified with her"), and we weren't allowed to separate the two. (Watch it here if you want to share - or not - my intense irritation.) It was didactic, and it was telling. Jane Austen is public domain.

As is her death. And, sure, it's fascinating. But it's also a reaffirmation of her peculiar status, both of the world and stubbornly elusive. While researchers have hypothesized since the 1960s that Austen died of a form of the adrenal gland-impairing Addison's disease - based on the scant hints in her correspondence - now there's a new theory: TB. Katherine White, an Addison's researcher, sums up Austen's symptoms as "bed-ridden exhaustion, unusual colouring, bilious attacks, rheumatic pains." While these could fit Addison's, her mental lucidity (advanced Addison's would typically have involved discombobulation, as well as pain and weight loss) have led others to suggest lymphoma, and, now, tuberculosis.

This diagnosis depends upon interpreting Austen's description of her complexion as "black and white and every wrong colour" as a reference to under-eye circles rather than a more general discoloration. Nevertheless, argues White,

Loss of concentration is reported by more than half of contemporary patients during their pre-diagnosis illness, while extreme sleepiness, slurred speech, confusion or a semi-conscious state are characteristic of adrenal crisis. Vomiting did not feature in Jane Austen's final 48 hours. Her family did not report an emaciated appearance and took comfort in the fact that she did not suffer greatly during her final illness.

More likely, she writes in the journal Medical Humanities, it was bovine-borne TB, an ignominious and common complaint of the era.

The only thing that can be asserted for certain is the following, from the London Times :

Carole Reeves, the Outreach Historian at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London, said that it was impossible to diagnose cause of death with certainty so long after the event.

The paradox for me is this: doesn't it, ultimately, make us know Austen better in some ways to not know - as she didn't - the ultimate cause? In this, as in so many things, 21st century anachronisms have very little to do with the reality of her existence. (Not that I don't like a mystery as well as the next guy. Cue obligatory "truth universally acknowledged" reference. Oh, wait. )

Cause of Jane Austen's Death Not Universally Acknowledged [Guardian]
Jane Austen Probably Died From Tuberculosis, Claims Scholar [TimesUK]
How Jane Austen May Have Died From Tuberculosis - Not Addison's Disease [Daily Mail]

My colleagues and I are convinced that one of our co-workers is insane. The details are bizarre and too numerous to go through, but as an example, when collecting clothes for needy children we found that this worker, who admitted to never having been in a relationship, mentioned that he had a basement full of toddler clothing. When I told him about an encounter with a pushy beggar, he said: "You should have sliced his hand off with my knife." I have this fear that something bizarre will happen and then when the police ask: "Were there any signs?" we'd answer: "Sure, tons of them." Yet what were we going to do? Go to human resources and tell them he's crazy?

Dorothy Parker: Sticks and stones are mighty harsh/But beat your body in a marsh.

Soapy Smith: "Collecting clothes for needy children?" I know that game.

Lizzie Borden: Don't you travel with your own weapons?

Michel Foucault: Maybe you're insane.

Marie Antoinette: What are these "coworkers" of which you speak?

Jesus Christ: Y'know, you should really be more careful how you treat beggars. That's all I'll say. Verily.

Sigmund Freud: And who are you, Freud?

Jeffrey Dahmer: In his defense, there are much worse things you could have in your basement.

Robert Frost: Good fences make good neighbors.

Oscar Wilde: At least madness would be amusing; this is tedious.

Henry Darger: What? Some of us really like toddlers. And sometimes the state won't let us adopt, okay?

Baby Jane Hudson: Exactly! How else are you supposed to do musical numbers?

Jack the Ripper: Hand? Then they can identify you! That's why the lord made "disemboweling."

Franz Kafka: You say "something bizarre" like that's a bad thing.

Jane Austen: One may live a very full life without a "relationship," Sir.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck offices.

DearLucy [Financial Times]

8 Cervarix is only $5 cheaper than Gardasil, but unlike Merck's vaccine, it doesn't prevent two other types of HPV that cause genital warts. The committee decided not to endorse one vaccine over the other, and the CDC still has to adopt the committee's recommendation for it to be approved for widespread use. • The Oklahoma law that would require the collection and anonymous public sharing of abortion patients' personal data will not go into effect as scheduled on November 1, due to some legal wrangling and highly unusual judicial decisions. The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a suit requesting a temporary restraining order to prevent the law from going into effect on behalf of two local women. The judge recused herself from the case and the new judge, Twyla Mason Gray, has ignored the request but granted the state's request for an extension, moving the hearing to December 4. Gray set the bond for the temporary restraining order request at $25,000, which is an uncommonly large sum for such cases. Oklahoma Representative Wanda Jo Stapleton says so much personal information would be made public by the law that, "Women in small towns can be identified by nosy neighbors or, equally important, they can be misidentified when the guessing games start." • Megan Williams of West Virginia is now says she was lying when she reported that she was assaulted by a group of white men. She accused the men of keeping her in a trailer for several days, beating and stabbing her, and forcing her to eat animal feces. Seven men plead guilty and were convicted, but now her lawyer says she made up the story to get revenge on one of the men she was having a relationship with. Prosecutor Brian Abraham says the men were convicted on physical evidence and their own statements. • In only the second known case of a sperm donor passing on a genetic disease, a donor has given the heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy to nine of his 24 children. One died at age 2 and two of the children, who are now teenagers, are at risk for sudden cardiac death. • Dr. Marci Bowers, who herself underwent a sex-change operation, now performs "female circumcision reversals" that can restore sexual pleasure in 80% of genital mutilation victims. One patient says she's looking forward to "a romance with my husband." • Israeli researchers say people who are violent with their partners are usually in control with their friends and bosses. They say the abuser usually goes through a calculated decision-making process and their behavior often escalates from verbal aggression, to threats of physical aggression, then moderate physical aggression, and severe physical aggression. • Six women are accused of posing as victims of domestic violence to jump to the top of the New York City Housing Authority's waiting list for subsidized apartments. A manager noticed there were similarities in some of the women's police reports and other documents. If convicted of forging court documents, the women could each face seven years in prison. • 53-year-old John Marshall of California has been charged with drugging and raping an acquaintance then shaving off all of his victim's hair. There are at least two other complaints from men and boys who say he drugged and raped them but he hasn't been charged with those crimes and is currently out on bail. • Kuwait's highest court has granted women the right to obtain a passport without their husband's approval. Thousands of women have been petitioning the courts to overturn the 1962 law requiring their husbands' signatures for a passport. Women in Kuwait can vote, serve in parliament, and drive, unlike women in some neighboring countries. • Researchers from Yale University and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System asked 18,481 female and 134,731 male veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom if they are in pain since coming home. Only 38 percent of female veterans compared to 44 percent of the men said they experienced any pain, and women were more likely to report moderate-severe pain but less likely to report persistent pain. "We were surprised by the lower pain prevalence in women Veterans which is contrary to studies conducted in civilian populations," said Dr. Sally Haskell. The discrepancy could be due to the fact that women do not serve in direct combat roles, or women being reluctant to seek treatment and admit they're in pain. • A 50 year-old Russian coal miner is trying to sell a signed photograph of Brigitte Bardot to pay for a $2,090 operation to treat his lung disease. • The one day suspension of a Springfield, Illinois bus driver who wore a pink tie to support breast cancer awareness has been rescinded. Springfield Mass Transit District managing director Linda Tisdale wrote in a newspaper editorial, "Unfortunately, my decision has left the mistaken impression that the SMTD and I do not support the Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign and, even more regrettably, has hurt and insulted the many families who have had to deal with this horrible disease." • A Florida judge says he will not dismiss a civil lawsuit against Casey Anthony, charged with killing her daughter Caylee. The girl's former nanny Zenaida Gonzales is suing Anthony because she says she damaged her reputation by naming her as a suspect in Caylee's death. • A recent study found that adults who are childhood cancer survivors are 20 to 25 percent less likely to marry compared with their siblings and the American population. Sometimes cancer treatment can lead to fertility or developmental problems and survivors may suffer from ongoing medical issues. • Hahnium Goren, the mother of a 15-year-old girl believed to be murdered by her father in an "honor killing," testified against her husband Mamet Goren in a London court today. While on the stand she screamed at him, "Look at my face. What did you do to Tu lay?" He's accused of killing their daughter in 1999 because she was dating a boy he didn't approve of. • The British news program More4 News will feature actors playing Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, and John Ruskin "reporting" on the societal changes since their time. The Jane Austen character will discuss modern courtship and the waning popularity of marriage and observe a speed-dating session where "you can encounter dozens of potential partners in one evening, with no obligations." • Some extremely serious runners have their toenails surgically removed to make 50 or 100-mile races less painful. Nails are removed by pouring acid on the nail bed. A podiatrist who treats runners says, "Even within the ultra community, less than 10 percent or maybe even 5 percent are permanently removing their toenails." •

Although the terrible-but-somehow-compelling Becoming Jane claimed that the great love of Austen's life was James MacAvoy Tom Lefroy, now a literary historian, Dr Andrew Norman, says the real culprit was a clergyman named Dr Samuel Blackall. As the Telegraph puts it, "Few of Austen's letters between 1801 and 1804 survive, making corroboration of the relationship difficult." But Blackall's correspondence, together with Austen's work from the period and a little sleight-of-geograohgical-timeline, point towards a (possible!) romance.

It's long been thought that this same period saw an estrangement between Jane and her beloved sister Cassandra - and, quite obviously, it was over this clergyman. At any rate, this is what Norman speculates, largely because The Watsons, which Austen wrote around this time, features a love affair doomed by a sister with "no faith, no honour, no scruples, if she can promote her own advantage" and a poem from the period which, read in the right way, supports the theory. Given the hijinx of many of Austen's heroines, it seems taking the biographical approach too far is a slippery slope - but yes! By all means let this be a movie! We recommend Hugh Dancy for the clergyman, and we'd like to direct casting directors' attention to Scarlett and Natalie's unimpeachable record of playing rival sisters who look nothing alike in very poor period pieces.

Mystery Jane Austen Suitor Who Sparked Riff With Sister Named [Telegraph]

Here's what "Randi" wrote into Obit Mag's mortality-related advice column.

Dear Judy,

I can hardly stand to write this, I'm so embarrassed. My older sister died a year ago, more or less. It wasn't a big surprise. She had uncontrollable diabetes. Also, she was very overweight and weak, never exercised and didn't take care of herself the way she should have.

My problem is her husband. I've been crazy about him for a few years now. Obviously, while my sister was alive I never told him, my brother or anyone about my feelings. Now that she's dead, my feelings for him are getting a lot worse. Meaning they're getting stronger. He was very upset by my sister's death: They have a son who's 8. I was sad too, but obviously conflicted about many things.

Would it be bad for me to tell this man how I feel about him now? If I do, I know my mother will freak. She was abandoned by my father right after I was born, so she has a lot of thoughts on the subject of love and marriage, as you can imagine. Also, I'm not too sure how the rest of our extended families will react.

I don't know what to do, which is why I'm writing you.

Randi

Judy's advice is, as ever, very sensible. As she says, "I'm in a really bad position here since you haven't given me a clue about your brother-in-law — namely, whether or not he's ever shown any indication that he's interested in you. Which is a fairly important factor." She also suggests that, given how short a time the sister's been dead, she should hold off - from confessing to anyone.

Here is what various dead people had to say:

Dorothy Parker: Darling, to hell with them. But remember: "Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away." Or not. Fools lap up folly like Manhattans.

Joseph Smith: Why art you not his plural wife in the first place?

Dr. Atkins: Diet and exercise are overrated. At the end of the day, we're all here and some of us haven't eaten a piece of fruit in thirty-two years.

Lizzie Borden: 'Wasn't a big suprise?' I know that game.

Jane Austen: Thoughts of love and marriage, madam, do not wisdom make, and what is more, the disapprobation of one's family can upon occasion bestow an untold degree of felicity - and distance not easily breached by a few miles of good road.

Anais Nin: The heart does not know law, know marriage...anxiety is love's only enemy!

Oscar Wilde: I have little to declare, madam, but your tedium. There are few things less engaging than a "widower," save perhaps an Ulster widower.

Flannery O'Connor: If he wanted you, he'd have you. Men seldom don't have what they want.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck You.

In Love With A Widower, Terminal Depression And Bucking Dependency [Obit]

"This project has been like a dream come true for me as a writer and as a former graphic designer," says Butler of the series, "not only am I adapting a book I love, I am doing it in the one forum, comics, where words and pictures carry equal weight." [Marvel]

[Image via Bronette]

Earlier: An Excerpt From Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

In addition, the Janeites paraded (in costume) down the Magnificent Mile, banqueted, and attended seminars with names like “Jane Austen and Global Warming” and “ “Blogging Jane; or, Blog Snarkily and Carry a Big a Big Cluebat.” Unsurprisingly, the event swings distaff: At the ball, "women are partnering women for the most part, though here and there one sees a male specimen in knee breeches, long coat, and curled wig sashaying happily amid the beribboned throng." And although the serious-minded event is far from a mere reenactment, one can't image that at just any academic conference you'd hear a woman murmur, “'She would do well to sew a little lace over the bodice'” of a colleague's decolletage. [The Smart Set]

The way this article opens kind of illustrates my point: "In times of anxiety, I always turn to Jane Austen’s novels for tranquil distraction. Not that Jane was unfamiliar with financial crises and banking failures. On the contrary: she knew all about them from personal experience." This is how much rationales always seem to go: Jane Austen's small, organized world of rules and wit is a comforting escape, so let's take something scary and make an inexact leap, putting it in comfortable Austen-like terms that reduce everything to a gently humorous comedy of manners that ends with a wedding.

This is not to disparage the scope or appeal of Austen's work, which obviously owes a good measure of its brilliance to the natural universality inherent to all good writing, and all honest portrayal of emotion. Nor is it to slight the perfectly interesting bit of biography the article in question details - hey, I didn't know much about her frivolous merry widow sister-in-law - but simply to question the weird "Austen is always applicable" notion that seems to have crept into our culture.

Not that taking comfort from Austen us a new phenomenon; World War I "Janeites" famously escaped the horror of trench warfare by discussing Austen's orderly novels. The Jane Austen Book Club certainly made hay of the notion: everyone's modern problems are neatly solved when they dive into the wisdom of Austen; at one point in the movie version, a traffic light actually flashes the words "What Would Jane Do?"

But here's the thing: she wouldn't do anything. Because she wouldn't be in a position remotely like that or any of our times, and her own world was confined by strict codes of conduct. Which, when you think about it, is what people find so comforting — the strictures within which human dramas play out. So why are they always trying to lift her out of that world and plop her into ours? Barack Obama is not Mr. Darcy; Jane Austen has no relevance to the current financial situation; Jane Austen would not be contemplating an affair with a high school student, as does the JABC character.

What's funny is that we never read pieces like, "Who would Edith Wharton have voted for?" or "What Henry James character is Angelina most like?" although there are certainly plenty of respected authors with well-read canons. And maybe that's what's sort of annoying about the whole superficial Jane-ing of the culture: you don't need to have read it — or, hell, even have seen one of the hundred movies — to enter into these fatuous hypotheticals. Because at the end of the day, the Austen industry has very little to do with the substance of Mansfield Park or the complexities of Persuasion. Rather, it's a shorthand for cozy easy-intellectual escapism that does her novels a real disservice. What would Jane do? Be pleased her books still sold so well. And probably be completely baffled and amused by this half-assed coopting of her trademark!

And Another Thing [Spectator]

One note about the choices. Of course there are many, many books by men that "should" be read, but just like Esquire's list, most of the extant rosters of must-read classics are full of old white dudes. So our list is going to be mostly women. Anyway, here goes!

• The Lottery, Shirley Jackson
• To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
• The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
• White Teeth, Zadie Smith
• The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende
• Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
• Excellent Women, Barbara Pym
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
• Beloved, Toni Morrison
• Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
• Like Life, Lorrie Moore
• Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
• The Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
• A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley
• A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor
• The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
• You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down, Alice Walker

Now you go!

75 Books Every Man Should Read [Esquire]