Novelist Rodi (Fag Hag, The Sugarman Bootlegs) continues his broadside against the depiction of Jane Austen as a "e;a woman's writer … quaint and darling, doe-eyed and demure, parochial if not pastoral, and dizzily, swooningly romantic — the inventor and mother goddess of 'chick lit.'"e; Instead he sees her as "e;a sly subversive, a clear-eyed social Darwinist, and the most unsparing satirist of her century."e; In this volume, which collects and amplifies three years' worth of blog entries, he combs through the final three novels in Austen's canon — Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion — with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she's a romantic of any kind. "e;Hiarious ... Rodi's title is a tribute. He's angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who's 'wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist' … Like Rodi, I believe Austen deserves to join the grand pantheon of gadflies: Voltaire and Swift, Twain and Mencken."e; - Lev Raphael, The Huffington Post

Novelist Rodi (Fag Hag, The Sugarman Bootlegs) continues his broadside against the depiction of Jane Austen as a "e;a woman's writer … quaint and darling, doe-eyed and demure, parochial if not pastoral, and dizzily, swooningly romantic — the inventor and mother goddess of 'chick lit.'"e; Instead he sees her as "e;a sly subversive, a clear-eyed social Darwinist, and the most unsparing satirist of her century."e; In this volume, which collects and amplifies three years' worth of blog entries, he combs through the final three novels in Austen's canon — Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion — with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she's a romantic of any kind. "e;Hiarious ... Rodi's title is a tribute. He's angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who's 'wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist' … Like Rodi, I believe Austen deserves to join the grand pantheon of gadflies: Voltaire and Swift, Twain and Mencken."e; - Lev Raphael, The Huffington Post

Novelist Rodi (Fag Hag, The Sugarman Bootlegs) continues his broadside against the depiction of Jane Austen as a "e;a woman's writer … quaint and darling, doe-eyed and demure, parochial if not pastoral, and dizzily, swooningly romantic — the inventor and mother goddess of 'chick lit.'"e; Instead he sees her as "e;a sly subversive, a clear-eyed social Darwinist, and the most unsparing satirist of her century."e; In this volume, which collects and amplifies three years' worth of blog entries, he combs through the final three novels in Austen's canon — Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion — with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she's a romantic of any kind. "e;Hiarious ... Rodi's title is a tribute. He's angry that the Austen craze has defanged a novelist who's 'wicked, arch, and utterly merciless. She skewers the pompous, the pious, and the libidinous with the animal glee of a natural-born sadist' … Like Rodi, I believe Austen deserves to join the grand pantheon of gadflies: Voltaire and Swift, Twain and Mencken."e; - Lev Raphael, The Huffington Post