The Complete Jane Austen (meets Belichick)

[I originally posted this on 1/20/08.  My, how things have changed in slightly under two years.  Brett Favre was a Jet for about 5 seconds, is now a Viking, and is playing possibly the best football of his life.  Bill Belichick and his Pats are having a rebuilding year, to put it kindly after last night's Monday Night Football debacle.  But Jane Austen is still going strong, albeit as an unlikely entrant into the ranks of zombie fiction.]

Is anyone else out there reading Jane Austen at the same time as a Bill Belichick biography?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Here's what disparate tastes I have. For the last two Sundays I've been torn between my two loves, football and Austen.

Two weeks ago PBS's Masterpiece Theatre kicked off its Complete Jane Austen festival with an adaptation of Persuasion that I missed because I was out socializing after the Dallas - Giants playoff game. Then this past Sunday was agony, as I switched back and forth between the Packers and Giants in the NFC Championship and Northanger Abbey, the second in the Masterpiece Theatre series. The latter was so engrossing that I actually stuck with it over poor Brett and the Pack, thus wisely avoiding the tragic end of Green Bay's season. (No I don't have Tivo; call me old-fashioned, but there's just something about watching a show live.)

The adaptation of Northanger Abbey, Austen's satire of Gothic romances, was so fun that it inspired me finally to give the novel a try. As for the late David Halberstam's Belichick biography, The Education of a Coach, a Patriots-loving friend urged me to read it to understand better the work ethic behind the seemingly-perfect team.

Both books are about how youthful optimism gives way to wisdom and experience. And that's about all I can find in common between Austen's and Halberstam's works, other than crisp and excellent writing.