Anthea Carson's Blog - Posts Tagged "jane-austen"

I would have never thought I would have enjoyed reading Henry Fielding so much but I really do.

First of all, it was unlikely that I was going to read this book. No one had recommended it to me, it wasn't required reading for a class or a book club. I had never heard it mentioned other than maybe occasionally on a list of great books. But the name never stood out to me as something I would want to read.

But I do love reading the classics, and am almost never disappointed when I read a book from those great book lists. And I love Jane Austen. So what gave me the idea to read Tom Jones was watching the movie "Becoming Jane" (an excellent movie).

In the movie, Jane's friend Thomas tells her that she will never be a real author till she experiences the world and breaks out of the restrictive role that social expectations has placed her in. Then he hands her the book "Tom Jones."

So I decided to give it a try.

I almost gave up upon reading the first paragraph. I could barely understand a word. Plus I kept thinking what a ridiculous author he was because he kept philosophizing. These old fashioned writers didn't know what they were doing, they weren't sophisticated like we are today, I thought to my self.

Boy was I wrong.

I hung in there and plodded through (I'm still plodding through it and I started it at Christmas), looking up words when I absolutely had to, checking the footnotes etc. Using my trusty google button on my iphone--able to not only to look up words but odd names of places that were key to the story, contemporary news that Fielding would refer to, local politician's scandals, and the like all would have made for a difficult read without my iphone.

Fielding would refer to some famously ugly woman to compare one of his characters to. Without my iphone that would have been difficult to say the least. But with it, I could google it and see an instant image of the poor woman.

I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed reading this fabulously witty, intensely talented and thought provoking writer.

I love his dialogue. I thought I wrote good dialogue, used to be pretty impressed with myself. Then I read him! I love the raw realness, the gritty mudslinging brutality that the characters show each other, I love how the claws come out, and all decorum is thrown out the window in their passionate outbursts.

I love the characters. So true to life! Some trying to control another, some who think they know it all and are so off-base you want to step in there and set them straight. Step all the way back to 1740.

It really shows you, in so many ways things haven't changed. And if we thought for one moment that we in the 21st century were sophisticated authors we should really stop before we embarrass ourselves, and check out the truly greats.

I wanted to write Game of Kings because I have spent 20 years playing Tournament Chess and I thought people might find this world intriguing, because of the nature of the game and because of the strange assortment of people I met and got to know.
I chose to use a template plot, and picked my favorite, the tried and true structure of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I did not use the character names, but just the personalities and plot points. I’ve always been intrigued by the brilliance of these plot devices. I love how Lizzy and Mr. Darcy are thrown so believably together by her sister’s love interest in his dearest friend. The chemistry is built into the relationship by the fact that though they dislike each other, they are confined together in a closed space for lengths of time.
Chess tournaments are ripe for this. We often joke that we are really like a big dysfunctional family. Even if you hate each other you might find yourself paired against each other in a game, forced to sit across from each other for as long as 7 hours for a game.
Another feature that I like about Game of Kings is that I didn’t write this one alone, I wrote it as a team with the wonderful editor I used for The Oshkosh Trilogy, DJ Natelson, an author whose work I respect and admire. I believe that working alone I could not have achieved the level of success that Game of Kings has had, because I simply would have put way too much chess in there, and alienated the bulk of my readers.
After all, this book is not for chess players, it is for fans of Jane Austen. And most chess players, as you will learn from the book, are so obsessed with chess they rarely raise their head above the board to look around at the world, much less the romance novels contained in it.