Inquiring Readers: All Roads Lead to Austen: A Yearlong Journey with Jane Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith is now available through Sourcebooks. I will be reviewing this fabulous, intelligently written book later this week. Meanwhile, enjoy my interview with Ms. Smith about her Latin American adventure as she discusses Jane Austen’s novels en Español with Latin American book groups. All readers of this blog from any country can enter a contest to win a copy of this charming book. Please click on this link and leave your comment. Make sure to leave a way I can reach you. Contest is now closed!
Amy, I love that Jane Austen, a spinster who didn’t travel far or frequently in her lifetime, is so beloved the world wide over. Which country surprised you most in terms of her popularity there and why?
I found translations of Austen left and right in bookstores in Argentina. I met plenty of people there who’d read Austen and liked her or who’d seen film adaptations of her novels and enjoyed them. And the Jane Austen Society of Buenos Aires was the first Austen society in South America. But sometimes it’s hard not to be influenced by stereotypes about people — I’d heard that Chileans were “the English of South America,” so somehow I thought Austen would be popular in Chile. But when I was living in Santiago, the capital (which I absolutely loved), a number of people told me Austen’s not very well known in Chile.
As for Argentineans, I’d heard over and over from people in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and other places that Argentineans are, well, pretty arrogant. Other latinos kept passing on jokes like, “When Argentineans see lightening, what do they think is happening? They think it’s God, taking their picture!” So, I guess I got the idea that Argentineans might think Austen was stuffy or old fashioned or some such thing. But she’s popular, at least in Buenos Aires, according to my experiences.
What aspects of that particular culture do you think Jane would have enjoyed the most?
Bookstores, bookstores, bookstores. I had great experiences in bookstores all over Latin America, but Argentina — and Buenos Aires specifically — really is the bookstore capital of South America. It’s so easy for us now to take for granted that we can get our hands on just about any book we want, any time. We’ve got access to bookstores, next-day delivery with websites, and good public libraries. And electronic readers have made it easier than ever — just order whatever book you want, wherever you are on the planet! But imagine what it must have been like for an imaginative, inquisitive reader like Austen — how often did she ever set foot in a bookstore? How often could she afford to pay for books from a circulating library? How many books did her family or friends or neighbors actually own? I think Austen would have fainted from sheer pleasure at the sight of bookstore after bookstore on Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires.
Librerias Libertador: One of my favorite bookstores on Corrientes, in Buenos Aires
Jane Austen fans cross all religious boundaries. Can you identify any characteristics that Janeites share across the world, besides their obvious love for Jane Austen’s novels?
I honestly can’t speak for many places beyond Latin America (although I might try a next project in some other interesting countries!). But I suspect that there’s a kind of optimism that people — especially women — love about Austen. Her leading ladies find love, not in spite of being strong and intelligent, but because of it. That’s a pretty appealing idea in a world were, in many places, women are still told they’d better not appear too smart, or they’ll scare men off.
What were some of your most memorable experiences in writing this book?
I actually started the book while I was still traveling, although I didn’t finish it until after my trip was done. I wrote the first portion on Guatemala while I was living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I was living well away from the tourist area, renting a partially-finished house that had glass in only one or two windows, so it was pretty noisy — street vendors would cruise by with loudspeakers, selling ice cream, vegetables, you name it. The people across the street had a huge bird caged outside their house that shrieked and chattered like a demon. And animals would wander in at will — there was one very persistent cat that kept making me jump out of my skin by appearing under my writing table with no warning.
There were animals all over the place in that neighborhood — no leash laws for dogs, and some of the neighbors had roosters and other farm animals. When I wanted a break from writing, I’d wander out to buy groceries or take my clothes to the laundromat. I always carried them in a plastic bag, and there was this goat a few houses down from me that was only tied up about half of the time. When it was loose, it usually ignored me, but when I had that plastic bag with laundry, it would come bolting after me — maybe its food came in a plastic bag, and it thought I had something good to eat? Or maybe it knew I had laundry and really wanted to eat my socks. Who knows. Sometimes I actually miss that goat — laundry day’s not the same without it.
A friendly neighborhood rooster from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Thank you, Amy, for your wonderful insights and good luck with your book. (I just love the cover!) Is there anything else you would like my readers to know about All Roads Lead to Austen?
Amy Elizabeth Smith
I had two main sources of inspiration for this book — Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran, and my own Jane Austen students at the University of the Pacific, in California. Readers can enjoy All Roads as a fun opportunity to sit back and be an armchair traveler, but I’d also love it if the book inspired some other international journey I could sit back and read about. Austen in China? Turkey? Belgium? Bora Bora? I’d love to see somebody else take on a journey like this with Jane. Even if they don’t want to write a whole book about it — I’d love to have people share reading-on-the-road stories on my website (http://allroadsleadtoausten.com/). Consider that an official invitation! And thanks so much for letting me visit here at Jane Austen’s World!
To Enter the Contest: Please make sure to leave your comment on Jane Austen Today at this link. The first two comments left on this post will be included in the random number generator drawing at midnight EST USA time on June 11. Please leave all other comments on Jane Austen Today. Make sure to leave a way I can reach you.
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As a Latina who loves Jane, I’d love to win a copy of this book! It sounds like a fun read. :)
Hi Vic, It would please me very much to win a copy of All Roads Lead to Austen” A Yearlong Journey with Jane Austen. Thank you. Liz S.
Great interview and a book with a unique premise. I would like to win. Thank you. Beth Massey
Sounds exciting! I’d love to travel but it hasn’t been a possibility except in my general area of living. I’d love to see where the author leads us down this path/road. I’d enjoy reading this book.
I’m glad to see that some people are interested in the book — thanks for letting me join in here at Jane Austen’s World! AES
I’ve already posted a comment on the JA Today blog, but I cannot help to also post a comment here. Ms. Smith, yes, there are quite a lot of people interested. For example, I am Mexican and it is usually difficult to find people really and seriously interested in Jane Austen (in part that is also why, for 13 years, I’ve also helped to run a JA forum in Spanish in internet). In my experience, even in college, my English literature professors were in general dismissive of any interest in her work, so I would be looking forward to read what were you able to perceive when visitint my part in the world. And I am sorry that I was not aware of your stay overhere when it happened.
“But imagine what it must have been like for an imaginative, inquisitive reader like Austen — how often did she ever set foot in a bookstore? How often could she afford to pay for books from a circulating library? How many books did her family or friends or neighbors actually own? ”
Actually Jane had access to a lot of books.
Her father and a couple of her brothers graduated from Oxford.. Her father had a library of about 500 books. He also taught at Oxford.
Her friends like the Chutes and Lefroys were landed gentry and they would have had extensive libraries in their houses. Her brother,Edward Knight had two large estates with accompanying libraries. In Milsom Street, Bath she would have had access to circuating libraries and in the High Street in Southampton there were circulating libraries.I don’t thnk it was expensive to loan books from these. Circulating libraries opened the world of books to a wide audience. In her novels and letters she refers to books, and plays she knew well.
Jane didn’t get much formal education in a schools but she read voraciously and fed her imagination with the great choice of books around her and even wrote her own History of Britain . Her mother wrote poetry and her brothers wrote plays which Jane, cassandra and her brothers and their friends participated in.
Who knew Austen had such a large following in South America? I love that ereaders are breaking down geographic borders when it comes to literature. Thanks for sharing.
I completely agree with you, Amy. Austen’s female protagonists are so strong and powerful – without being obviously so.
She was a strong voice for women in the 19th century and I think was actually writing down what many women were already feeling and doing.
Through acknowledging women’s lack of power or status, she highlighted this as an issue, not through some obvious “Rise up womankind!” Romantic proclamation, but through her beautifully crafted narration.
Fantastic.
I don’t think the suffragttes lead by the Pankhursts were in anyway, “romantic.”They were highly intelligent, well organised, very very brave women who suffered incarceration in prison and force feeding, which was reallly a nasty form of torture, for you. They did get things done. The world was never the same. I hope you are not in anyway denigrating their efforts. You would not have female emancipation without them. AND I am MAN standing up for them.
It sounds like a great book and a wonderful trip.
I’m reading All Roads Lead to Austen on my Nook and really enjoying it. Smith captures Austen’s novels and the various Latin American peoples and locales very well. I teach “Pride and Prejudice” in my 10th grade Honors English class, so an actual copy of the book would come in handy.
Thank you all for participating. I combined the comments (in order) on this blog and Jane Austen Today and drew the name by Random Number Generator, omitting the deleted comment. Congratulations, Cynthia!