I am starting to feel that the single most egregious thing that was done to me in college was to omit explaining just how entertaining Jane Austen was as a writer. I mean, sheesh, it turns out that Northanger Abbey is a meta-fiction parody that snarks out on the excesses of the genre fiction of the day… and written by somebody who was good at said genre, too. I would have happily read that. Shoot: if Jane Austen was around today I’d probably be signed up for her Patreon and her Twitter feed. She’d certainly be writing books in the genres that I read.
And so, adieu to Red Storm Rising. Heh. A Jane Austen technothriller. The mind reels…
The video quality sucks, but when you mentioned Jane Austen technothriller…. https://youtu.be/7x6h96zs0Xc
I only read this last year. Somehow it wasn’t serious enough to make my undergraduate & masters in English reading lists. It is sooooooooooooo good and funny. Here I could have been re-reading it all this time!!
Related side note: Critics/ serious profs don’t seem to like happy books.
One of my major authors was Faulkner. All the critics wanted to discount The Reivers. Too happy. Even though he said this was his Tempest.