Pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy is prob­a­bly the worst rea­son to dis­miss a new per­spec­tive, whether it comes from with­in one’s field, out­side it, or any­where else. Snob­bery leads to inbreed­ing and intel­lec­tu­al dead-ends. So when Michael Chwe, an asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at UCLA who spe­cial­izes in game the­o­ry, has an epiphany about Jane Austen as a pro­to-game the­o­rist, maybe his insights should change the way Eng­lish profs—and every­one else—read the author of Pride and Prej­u­dice.

I don’t know. I haven’t read Chwe’s book, Jane Austen: Game The­o­rist (read a sam­ple chap­ter here), but I’ll con­fess, I’m skep­ti­cal of any­one who calls Austen’s lit­er­ary work a “research pro­gram” that has “results” in a book of “230 dia­gram-heavy pages.”  It seems to miss the point some­how. Austen is per­haps these days the most-adapt­ed of British writ­ers, and her aca­d­e­m­ic cachet couldn’t be high­er. But the best takes on her work—whether schol­ar­ly or popular—are fun, focused on char­ac­ter and lan­guage, not tech­no­crat­ic the­o­ry.

But maybe I’ve mis­judged Chwe’s intent. He was, after all, inspired to read Austen by “watch­ing movies and read­ing books with his chil­dren.” And one of the con­cepts Chwe ascribes to Austen is that of “clue­less­ness,” a term he takes from that clas­sic nineties movie Clue­less (inspired by Austen’s Emma, clip above). In Chwe’s analy­sis, clue­less­ness is not at all gar­den-vari­ety stu­pid­i­ty; it’s the benev­o­lent devi­ous­ness of Eliz­a­beth Ben­net or the “dumb blonde” act Ali­cia Silverstone’s char­ac­ter pulls off in con­vinc­ing oth­ers that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, all the while manip­u­lat­ing, cajol­ing, and demur­ring to get her way.

Chwe also pur­sues the dark­er side of clue­less­ness, relat­ing it to grim episodes like the 2004 killing of four pri­vate con­trac­tors in Fal­lu­ja. Over­all, his book iden­ti­fies fifty “manip­u­la­tion strate­gies” he finds in Austen. While his book seems to promise some enter­tain­ing obser­va­tions it also might fur­ther con­firm for seri­ous Austen read­ers that the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry nov­el­ist was one of the most psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly insight­ful writ­ers of the past few cen­turies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jane Austen’s Fight Club

New Stamp Col­lec­tion Cel­e­brates Six Nov­els by Jane Austen

As Pride and Prej­u­dice Turns 200, Read Jane Austen’s Man­u­scripts Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jmagness

Click the image for a larg­er view. And if it does­n’t get large enough, click it again…

Pyn­chon. What to say? An all-night marathon read­ing of Gravity’s Rain­bow changed my brain chem­istry. A cou­ple days locked in a room with V altered my real­i­ty for­ev­er. I read the first chap­ter of Mason & Dixon. Bought and for­got a copy of Against the Day. Scanned a review of Inher­ent Vice.

So maybe the lat­er Pyn­chon hasn’t grabbed me, or my leisure read­ing time has just evap­o­rat­ed. Or both. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. But now we’ve got anoth­er chance to gape at the reclu­sive paranoiac’s labyrinthine prose, since his new nov­el Bleed­ing Edge comes out Sep­tem­ber 17th. And pub­lish­er Pen­guin has thrown us a morsel—you can read the first page of Bleed­ing Edge (above), from Penguin’s Fall 2013 cat­a­log.

Described as a “his­tor­i­cal romance on New York in the ear­ly days of the inter­net,” Bleed­ing Edge takes place in a pre-lapser­ian 2001, “in the lull between the col­lapse of the dot-com boom and the ter­ri­ble events of Sep­tem­ber 11th.” The nov­el promis­es plen­ty of intrigue, dark humor, lay­ers of occult fore­bod­ing, “lamen­ta­tions about the ’60s coun­ter­cul­ture,” and “shady fascis­tic orga­ni­za­tions with futur­is­tic names.”

Read the full descrip­tion of Bleed­ing Edge at Gothamist.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Every­body is famil­iar with Fran­cis Cugat’s orig­i­nal cov­er art for The Great Gats­by. It famous­ly gives expres­sion to lines from Fitzger­ald’s clas­sic work — lines that talk about Daisy Buchanan as the “girl whose dis­em­bod­ied face float­ed along the dark cor­nices and blind­ing signs.” Accord­ing to Charles Scrib­n­er III, the orig­i­nal pub­lish­er, Cugat cre­at­ed the design while Fitzger­ald was still writ­ing the nov­el, and when Fitzger­ald saw the dis­em­bod­ied face, he could­n’t resist writ­ing the imagery into the book. Scrib­n­er quotes the author as say­ing, “For Christ’s sake, don’t give any­one that jack­et you’re sav­ing for me. I’ve writ­ten it into the book.”

Today, Cugat’s orig­i­nal book jack­et fetch­es more at auc­tion than a first edi­tion of the nov­el itself. And even though many oth­er artists have tak­en a crack at design­ing cov­ers for The Great Gats­by, none holds a can­dle to Cugat’s 1925 design. Just take a look at this pho­to gallery at The New York Times. (Click on each cov­er to see them in a larg­er for­mat.)

The Gats­by book cov­ers all cur­rent­ly reside at the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na, which hous­es oth­er items that Fitzger­ald held near and dear to him — like his copy of Joyce’s Ulysses, his leather brief­case, flask, and more. You can also find orig­i­nal dust jack­ets for Fitzger­ald’s oth­er nov­els on the SC web site, includ­ing Ten­der is the Night, This Side of Par­adise, and The Last Tycoon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Only Known Footage of the 1926 Film Adap­ta­tion of The Great Gats­by (Which F. Scott Fitzger­ald Hat­ed)

Sev­en Tips From F. Scott Fitzger­ald on How to Write Fic­tion

Loli­ta Book Cov­ers: 100+ Designs From 37 Coun­tries (Plus Nabokov’s Favorite Design)

Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cov­er for On the Road

Find The Great Gats­by in our Free eBooks col­lec­tion

Find the Yale Course “Hem­ing­way, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er” in our Col­lec­tion of 700 Free Online Cours­es