Mark Twain on Jane Austen:
I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
Karen Joy Fowler, author of “The Jane Austen Book Club” on that very quote:
I’m very fond of Mark Twain’s, which is, “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice, I want to dig her up and hit over the head with her own shin bone.” The part that I like about it is not his bewildering crabbiness, but that he apparently reads the book over and over again. He says, “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice,” and I just want to say to him, “Samuel! Stop reading the book!”
[...] Twain on Jane Austen: I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often [...]
[...] stones at him.” This theme of exhume-and-assault recurs in Mark Twain’s opinion of Jane Austen, which I recently shared. Poisoned Pens also includes Twain’s hilarious criticism of James Fenimore Cooper’s [...]