LMM: Round 3 Update

I'm going to rapid-fire this one, the Heat and the Celtics are playing...


Still looking for a reason to vote? Well, how about drug of choice? Kesey had his LSD, Faulkner his whiskey, Balzac drank too much coffee, and I'd bet francs to farthings that Miss Jane Austen was a fan of laudanum....
Under the Influence - Drugs Used During Composition

Speaking of which... Austen continues her domination as she goes up against Willa Cather in round three, while Nathaniel Hawthorne takes on Charlotte Bronte in the undercard. I want to title this quartet as something like, "What is a woman's role in society?" but that sounds kinda lame and meaningless to me, because any novel that has women and society in it could conceivably fall into that category. But this bracket is filled by marked women, whether by sin (Hester Prynne), age and class (Elinor Dashwood), or family (Jane Eyre). *

We've got some exciting results to report as we move on into the Sweet Sixteen! A couple of upsets: James Joyce is the first 1 seed to fall to #8 Art Spiegelman 7-3. (Y'know, I can't recall anyone actually proclaiming that they enjoy reading Joyce...) Spiegelman will advance to meet another Cinderella, #12 Neil Gaiman, who upset #4 Lewis Carroll 7-3. Good news: The graphic novel is now an acceptable literary form as of right... now.

The other match-up in that region will be #2 Virginia Woolf versus #3 Charles Dickens. Both of these authors won their second round matches quite handily, and the winner will probably be favored to get all the way to the Final Four.

Finally, the second region has become over-run by the Russians. To my surprise, #1 Leo Tolstoy defeated #9 Harper Lee 7-4, and will advance to meet #4 Gustave Flaubert in the next round, who defeated #5 Thomas Mann 5-3. Below them, #7 Vladimir Nabokov ended #15 Flannery O'Connor's run 6-3, and will have an excellent and intriguing match next round against #3 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who beat #6 Jorge Luis Borges by a convincing 7-2.

Keep voting!

* I'm hoping that this statement will motivate Robyn to correct me. She says that Jane Eyre is marked more by obscurity and will, or maybe poverty and will. She also says that, "But she is still marked differently than the Dashwood sisters in the way that Charlotte Bronte is different from Jane Austen. In the end, Jane Eyre is able to get angry and get a job, which may be why Jane Eyre as so popular amongst 19th-century working class women. Though that can play into the Twilight trope of having the little, plain, virtuous women taming the tall, brooding Byronic type. And then, of course, there is the whole race/colonial issues of having the Creole wife locked in the attic. Everyone should read Jane Eyre."