Flirting with Dickens

[lblanchard]

It being the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens, I thought I might try again to read something of his other than "A Christmas Carol."

I've never been terribly successful -- I've picked up and put down David Copperfield more times than I care to count. I've tried A Tale of Two Cities a couple of times. The guy's descriptions get on my nerves.

But I thought I'd try again. I downloaded Bleak House to my cellphone Kindle app, suffered through several screens of fog, and then realized this is the one about the interminable Jarndyce and Jarndyce suit in Chancery. Never mind.

Next I thought I might try Pickwick Papers, since that's supposed to be more cheerful. Somewhere along the second chapter a ne'er do well character was describing a possibly apocryphal tragedy in Spain, wherein a man's body was found in a fountain, with his head in a drainpipe and a full confession in his right boot. Wait a minute, says I, that sounds suspiciously like Kipling. I found the reference I was fairly sure I remembered, in Stalky & Co., in which one of our young hellions, ooops, heroes misquotes it totally out of context, putting the confession in the left boot not the right. As it was a splendid springlike afternoon, I settled down happily to renew my acquaintance, intimate and unholy, with those tales instead. Kipling keeps his narratives mercifully on point. None of this three pages of fog.

While I'm on the subject, here's a nice bit of Dickens trivia. Philadelphia is home to the only American publisher that honored Dickens' copyrights when he was a young man. Everybody else ripped him off. The ethical publisher was named Carey, Lea & Blanchard. Isn't that cool?

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Dickens can be a bit of a slog to those of us accustomed to the pacing of modern novels. It helps to remember that many of his were serialized, and the more he dragged out the story, the more he earned.

I've always liked Great Expectations, and what I've ready of Nicholas Nickleby, but for some reason I've never been able to finish the latter.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

It's the extensive interminable descriptions that get under my skin. Jane Austen didn't seem to find that necessary. Nor the Brontes. Maybe I should "read" Dickens via Libravox, while knitting.

[pameladean]

Different literary period altogether. Jane Austen died when Dickens was five, and the last of the Brontes was dead by the time he was eight.

I love the long descriptions, but some of the sentimentality drives me nuts.

Hard Times is short, but it's certainly not cheerful.

P.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

All true, but he still drives me nuts.

[pameladean]

Well, you've given him several trials, after all, so maybe he's just going to do that and you need a more austere narrative.

P.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

I have always found Dickens tedious. I've read through Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol so I've given him a chance.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I'm doing fairly well with Pickwick Papers on my cell phone Kindle right now. Perhaps pondhopper is right -- it takes a certain mindset. Sometimes one has it, and sometimes one doesn't.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Dickens requires a certain mindset for me to read him easily and willingly. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't.
But visiting the house he inhabited in London for a while was a great experience.
:D

http://www.dickensmuseum.com/

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

oh, yes. Bleak House made GREAT TV, I loved it, but OMG boring reading. Dickens is a taste I've never quite managed to acquire. Although, I do love A Christmas Carol and have read it several hundred times.

Very cool!

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Belated reply -- I find Dickens more palatable in film adaptations than on the printed page.