Jane Eyre: not angsty enough for teenage boys

io9 quotes Margaret Atwood on how she writes:

Joining us for a Q&A on her apocalypse trilogy (beginning with Oryx and Crake), Atwood shared her thoughts on topics ranging from her favorite word in the English language ("How about 'and'? It's so optimistic. And its story never ends, and..."), what a character with no sense of inner-self might look like ("Possibly Cruella DeVil? She sees no need to restrain herself. Puppies!"), and, in response to a question from commenter Tashar, just why she structured her trilogy the way she did:

I didn't originally intend to write three. But I am a Victorianist, and therefore familiar with modes of storytelling that are not linear. In fact very old writing tends not to be simply plot-driven and linear. The 1001 Nights, for instance. The Iliad, the Odyssey, And in the 19th C, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, The Turn of the Screw, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.. boxes with boxes, stories within stories. I suppose I like layers of experience: it looks like this from here, but go down here and a whole different vista opens up. As happens when we meet a person, then delve into who they really are. Never judge a person by lipstick alone. (Ria Misra)

Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins also discusses writing in the Washington City Paper.

The scenario emerged at least in part from Jacobs-Jenkins’ observation that black playwrights are expected, by virtue of their blackness, to issue sweeping statements about race and class—a burden their white colleagues can take on or cast off as they choose.
“I got called in for all these movie pitches after Neighbors,” he says. “I would just pitch things I was interested in: What about a Chekhov biopic? People would just give me blank stares.”
“Someone said to me, ‘I’m going to teach you how to do this. What was your favorite book in college?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know—Wuthering Heights?’ And he said, ‘How would you take Wuthering Heights and set it in Bed-Stuy?’ (Chris Klimek)

The Christian Science Monitor quoting from BBC News is looking at 'Classic novels with themes of alienation are revered by today's teenagers (especially boys)'.

Whereas young men tend to gravitate toward angst-themed works, young women turn to works exploring social mores.
“There’s an absolutely dramatic difference between what girls and boys read at puberty,” Lisa Jardine, a historian who has researched reading preferences of men and women, told the BBC. “Boys read angst books, so they read ‘Catcher in the Rye,’ ‘L’Etranger,’ and books like that. Girls read expanding emotion and sensibility books. ‘Jane Eyre,’ [Dodie Smith’s] ‘Capture the Castle,’ the Brontës…books about difficult relationships.” (Husna Haq)

We would hazard that The Catcher in the Rye is equally read by both teenage girls and boys, though.

The Arts Desk features Bridget Christie, known around these parts for her A Bic for Her comedy.

She's a wonderful physical comic, too, hilariously acting out a scene in which the Brontë sisters realise that they can't write their masterpieces because the pen of the show's title, "in a range of pastel shades with an easy-to-hold grip" for delicate little fingers, has not yet been invented. (Veronica Lee)

The New York Mag's Daily Intelligencer discusses Twitter on the day the company debuted on Wall Street.

Thirteen tweets in May 2010, 553 tweets in May 2013. I am, on average, tweeting 45 times more per day than I used to. Put differently, I somehow went from 370 tweets in all of 2010 to 5,167 in the first ten months of this year.
That huge quantitative shift began as a subtle qualitative shift. In November of 2010, already privately a bit bored with wrongness, I broke form — or, more aptly, began to find it — and tweeted a video about cephalopods. Then came an intrepid nineteenth-century nurse and her irresistibly titled book: On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers. One evening in December, on the train home from a literary event, I tweeted a handful of imaginary book-band mash-ups: Pale Arcade Fire. Rabbit, Run DMC. When Bad Things Happen to Good Village People. A stranger tweeted back at me: Jane Eyre Supply. Ha! I thought. This is fun. (Kathryn Schulz)

Flavorwire selects Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights as one of  'The 50 Best Debut Singles in Music History'.

Kate Bush — “Wuthering Heights”
One of the most idiosyncratic debut singles the world has ever heard, and one of the most memorable — there just aren’t that many Brontë-inspired oddball singer/songwriters around, sadly. Also memorable: that video, with Bush’s iconic red dress and her equally iconic interpretive dance moves. (Tom Hawking)

Keighley News has an article on the locals' campaign to save one of Haworth's public toilets (which the Bradford council is intending to close as part of its cost-cutting plans).

A local sophomore whose favourite book is Jane Eyre is featured on Mainline Media News. Library Goddesses Fiction for Adults has reread Jane Eyre after reading Margot Livesey's The Flight of Gemma Hardy. Daisy Dolls' Jane Eyre now has a beautiful gown. The Brontë Parsonage Facebook page accompanies a picture of Mrs Bronte's shipwrecked trunk, as imagined by artist Charlotte Cory with a fragment from a letter written by Maria to Patrick before they were married.