Like berry-colored lipstick and chunky-heeled Steve Madden boots, caring a lot about Jane Austen is a fad that needs to be left in the 90s where it belongs. Sadly, an Austen biopic starring Anne Hathaway will be released this August, doubtless spawning a bunch of trend articles with "it is a truth universally acknowledged" leads and paragraphs that open by addressing the reader as "Reader." The Times got into the game early with not one but two columns in yesterday's Week In Review section (which is usually about, like, war and stuff, right?) that link that film to a contested Austen portrait. Charles McGrath concludes that Austen "probably wasn't much of a looker," while Verlyn Klinkenborg op-editorializes that we're shallow for even wondering: "It is a failing to read Shakespeare and feel impoverished by the lack of biographical detail. It is no less a failing to read Austen and wonder what the mirror said when she looked into it. I cannot think of anything that would make "Emma" richer than it is." Conclusion: whoever was in possession of the responsibility for putting this section together must be in want of a clue.

Pretty Words, Jane, Would That You Were Too [NYT]
If Jane Austen Were Among Us Now, Whom Would She Cast As Herself? [NYT]