Those Austen Sequels, Parodies Aren’t Really So Benign

Jane Austen’s “power as a writer is inseparable from her own tantalizing delicacy. She knows exactly what to leave to the imagination. And we, with our culture of explicit candor, have a lot of trouble leaving it there. She makes us want more – and if she won’t give it to us, then we’ll just manufacture it for ourselves. … And, in the process, we’re smashing the very thing that fascinates us most about Jane Austen: her reticence.”