DON’T WASTE YOUR FANDOM ON POLITICAL PERFORMANCE. I’ve been bummed over the past few years to watch as more and more Americans seemed to funnel their fan energies into politics, usually not in productive ways. I could be wrong: it’s possible that the vast and ever-expanding universe of fanfiction literature valorizing Robert Mueller will mobilize voters in the midterm elections, but it seems unlikely. I get it: U.S. political life has turned into a nonstop TV show, and everyone on social media is now a TV recapper, so things are bound to get a little weird.
Ted Scheinman, the author of Camp Austen, urges us to avoid treating U.S. national politics like a reality show
Listen to our interview with Ted // Listen to Ted’s full comments on @fansplaining‘s 3rd anniversary episode
As they do every August, Flourish and Elizabeth welcome the past year’s guests to talk about what’s changed in fandom, on a global level, a personal level, or both. Topics include the increase in fandom’s visibility, fans attacking creators, purity culture, and the dangers of treating politics like a television show. Flourish and Elizabeth then share their own perspectives on the past year, exploring how corporate structures underpin our fannishness, and developing new perspectives on what fanfiction is and what it can do.
Click through to our website to listen to the episode or read a full transcript!
Our Patrons just got our anniversary episode, featuring:
Adrian Hon (Zombies, Run!, etc)
Aja Romano (Vox, Kaleidotrope, etc)
Lilah Vandenburgh (UNCLE, The Flash, etc)
Ted Scheinman (Camp Austen, etc)
Britta Lundin (Riverdale, Ship It, etc)
Lori Morimoto (Fan Studies For Fans, Fannibal Fest, etc)
Stephanie Burt (Harvard poetry prof, etc)
...that’s a lot of et ceteras cause our guests this year were wonderful and have a lot of wonderful projects. You should listen!! But for the next 24 hours, only our Patrons can listen... so you should donate $2 and listen!!
Camp Austen: My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan
by Ted Scheinman
This was a fun little book that I read in a couple of hours one weekend. It’s exactly what it says in the subtitle, but it is also gives a glimpse of the author’s relationship with his mother, a scholar of 18thcentury British literature and an Austen fan. The writing style is breezy and fast-paced, with chapters ordered more topically than chronologically. He begins with an overview of Austen’s Juvenilia, which illuminates her development as a writer, before recounting how he stumbled reluctantly into involvement with the first Jane Austen Summer Camp during graduate school, partly attracted by the promise of being paid and partly guilted into it by his mother.
What follows is Scheinman’s chronicle of discovering fandom—in this case, the Austen fandom.
I have never attended a fan convention of any stripe, my fandom activities being confined to small corners of the internet, but what he describes is startlingly familiar—the arguments over the meaning of canon, the enthusiasm for recreating the world (somewhat modified to fit modern sensibilities and preferences), and the sense of belonging to an exclusive club. He sprinkles the book with amusing stories about this hidden world as he explores the different facets of a Jane Austen convention—scholarly talks, theatricals, merchants peddling everything from tea to fanfiction, and—of course—the obligatory ball.
But if that were all the book was, it would be nothing more than an appealing bit of ephemera. Scheinman gives it more relevance and significance by taking occasional excursions into meditations on the deeper meaning of Austen’s works: the place of community, the role of manners, and the necessity of occasional rule-breaking in society. He debunks many of the myths and popular conceptions surrounding Austen as a mere recorder of fashionable behavior. He excavates instead a woman who was a keen critic of manners that encourage hypocrisy, while espousing the pursuit of true virtue.
The tale comes to a satisfying conclusion as Scheinman’s participation in this fandom, satirical and reluctant though it is at times, reminds his mother of its existence and her love for it. They attend a few events together before Scheinman graciously excuses himself from the fandom, acknowledging that his acceptance into this world was not driven by his own passion for Austen but by his mother’s place in it. As the book concludes, it is clear that his initial cynicism has given way to affection, but that it is affection for a group to which he does not by right belong.
In episode 76, “Camp Austen,” Flourish and Elizabeth talk to with Ted Scheinman, the author of Camp Austen, a book about his experiences at an Austen con attended by academics and fans (and academic/fans, too!). They also read a trio of listener letters: two on redemption and antiheroes and one on AUs and reading fanfiction by trope.
Click through to our website to listen to the episode or read a full transcript!
In the English classrooms of my youth, Wilde was taught as a pillar of classical learning and modern suavity, not some licentious bogeyman. Wilde, now, is tame; safe. We canonize authors to pretend we understand them; we forgive authors who ought rather to forgive us.
Like Steinbeck or O’Connor, Ehle finds ancient truths in the American landscape, the land that Ehle evokes as a living thing—an impersonal spirit, yes, but also a character…
At the Oxford American, Ted Scheinman reviews John Ehle's Land Breakers
The job of the melancholic, then, is to maintain a steady effervescence of ideas and impressions, by which rust may dissipate and the world reclaim some of its shine.
