spy unseen

Yesterday the New York Times ran an article about Facebook and how so many people are on it now, it's like those who are not "on it" are sort of like a -- minority.

Different points of view were commented in: riotously funny;
there are people who spend a LOT of time on Facebook and LOVE it and are REALLY REALLY into it.

And there are people who use it, and enjoy it, but don't spend that much time -- it's a smaller part of their lives.

And there are people who -- have a -- (what do you call it? a -- space??) on Facebook, but they're not into it, they're somewhat critical of the type of information that gets put up there by people, and they sometimes think about closing their account.

And there are the people in the minority: they "don't have" and are "not on" Facebook.

It's like this whole -- spectrum. Or -- no, continuum. I don't know.

One guy said he was closing his Facebook account; he'd determined it was a waste of time, and he listed the things he intended to do with the Time he saved by not being on Facebook: read; work out; create art; spend time with the cat.
: )
I was utterly charmed by that. Some guy in upstate New York.
"Spend time with the cat."

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I had been thinking about three great English novelists anyway, whose work has some similarities: you could almost group them together, maybe --
Jane Austen
Helen Fielding
E.F. Benson.

They write -- funny novels. (Or should say -- wrote -- two of them, dead.)

Put that thought together with the Facebook -- I don't know -- celebration / debate / heated argument...
and began imagining the characters in these authors' novels & whether (and to what extent) each would use Facebook.

Jane Austen's stories are written, early 1800s, and E.F. Benson's "Lucia" novels came out between the two world wars, so of course no Facebook existed in the "real" world of these fiction worlds. But even Helen Fielding's famous Bridget Jones character didn't have Facebook, it's so New; Bridget Jones seems so Modern, yet technology moves so fast, it makes even a character who burst on the scene in the late 90s seem like she exists in a "past" world...

Now, Bridget Jones would use Facebook; her (wonderful) boyfriend Mark Darcy would not be on Facebook. Her friends Jude and Shazzer would be on Facebook, and so would their gay friend Tom. Bridget Jones's mother ("Mum") would so totally be so all over Facebook she would actually use it too much, create too many accounts, meet and "friend" too many people, and cause too much commotion & eventually the Facebook corporation would ask Mrs. Jones to please close her account and go away. (LOL!) P.S., Bridget's dad would be relieved.

Jane Austen's Emma would be on Facebook, but would use it sparingly. She would consider it a little bit beneath her, & would say to herself that she would not allow time spent on the social network to at all interfere with her piano practicing and reading of good literature. Mr. Knightley would have no use for Facebook. Mrs. Weston would be on Facebook to keep up with her sister in London, and with Emma. Mr. Woodhouse would be utterly disapproving of the whole concept of the internet, forget Facebook. He would have concerns and fears that people might become too mesmerized staring at their computer screens. (And, quaint as his worrying always is, he would not be entirely wrong in his conjectures.)

Miss Austen's "Elizabeth Bennet" in Pride And Prejudice would not disapprove of Facebook, & would consider opening an account, but would not have got around to it yet. Mr. Darcy most emphatically would not be on Facebook. Elizabeth Bennet's father would think Facebook was all right, but would not participate. Mrs. Bennet would be on it.

E.F. Benson's "Lucia" would resist the idea of Facebook, and would worry about whether members of her social circle were on it. Once she knew that some of them were on Facebook, she would want to look and see what they put up there, but she would not want anyone to know that she looked. Miss Mapp would search all over Facebook looking to see what the other people in the town put up there, and looking for something about anyone that she can interpet as bad. Georgie Pillson would be on Facebook, happily and humbly "friending" people.

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--------------[excerpt, Miss Mapp]: Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of high vivid color and corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of mind and body....Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.

She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the very convenient window of her garden room....This garden room, solid and spacious, was built at right angles to the front of her house, and looked straight down the very interesting street which debouched at its lower end into the High Street of Tilling....from a side window of the garden room...she could sit quite close to that, for it was screened by the large-leaved branches of a fig tree and she could spy unseen.

...There was little that concerned the social movements of Tilling that could not be proved, or at least reasonably conjectured, from Miss Mapp's eyrie. Just below her house on the left stood Major Flint's residence, of Georgian red brick like her own, and opposite was that of Captain Puffin. They were both bachelors, though Major Flint was generally supposed to have been the hero of some amazingly amorous adventures in early life, and always turned the subject with great abruptness when anything connected with duelling was mentioned....

...And only last week, being plucked from slumber by some unaccountable indigestion (for which she blamed a small green apple), she had seen at no less than twelve thirty in the morning the lights in Captain Puffin's sitting room still shining through the blind. This had excited her so much that at risk of toppling into the street, she had craned her neck from her window, and observed a similar illumination at the house of Major Flint. They were not together then, for in that case any prudent householder (and God knew that they both of them scraped and saved enough, or, if He didn't know, Miss Mapp did) would have quenched his own lights, if he were talking to his friend in his friend's house.

The next night, the pangs of indigestion having completely vanished, she set her alarm clock at the same timeless hour, and had observed exactly the same phenomenon. Such late hours, of course, amply accounted for these late breakfasts; but why, so Miss Mapp pithily asked herself, why these late hours?

...Miss Mapp had a mind that was incapable of believing the improbable....

[end Excerpt]
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{Miss Mapp, by E.F. Benson, Copyright
1922. George H. Doran Company.}

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