Dickensblog

A few thoughts on 'Martin Chuzzlewit'

I actually finished the novel some time ago, but haven't had a chance to write about it until now.

So . . . this was not one of my favorite Dickens novels. But I didn't expect it would be. I generally favor mid- to late Dickens. And beyond that, a lot of the criticism that this book gets is pretty accurate. Doctor Who, for instance, was spot-on about the "American bit." I know I can't help being a little biased, but the parts about America went far beyond the kind of satire he usually does, and were just plain heavy-handed. Once again, I'm grateful that he at long last made up his quarrel with us, and inserted that conciliatory postscript into the book! But he really should have held off writing this until he was in a bit of a better mood, I think.

Also (spoiler alert) . . .

'The Mumbai Chuzzlewits' on BBC Radio 4

The new reworking of Martin Chuzzlewit has begun airing. As with A Tale of Two Cities, you can subscribe to the podcast or listen on the BBC iPlayer. Be careful if you subscribe, though. The final episode of Two Cities didn't automatically download to my iTunes, and I had to go manually download it before it disappeared off the Web! (Remember, these are only available online for a limited amount of time.)

The Inimitable is inexhaustible

So says biographer Robert Douglas-Fairhurst in this interview about the upcoming adaptations.

7 Quick Takes Friday

• The Northampton Chronicle and Echo has a piece about Holdenby House, used for Satis House in the upcoming Great Expectations miniseries.
• A press release from the BBC about upcoming programs touches on Great Expectations, spoof series Bleak Old Shop of Stuff, and various Dickensian documentaries.
• At SummitDaily.com, Patrick Williams points out, "Diligent reading of Dickens is a far better guarantee of high verbal SAT and GRE scores than all the drilling for vocabulary tests or Kaplan prep books -- take note, all students."
• BBC News talked to the curators of new Dickens exhibits at the Museum of London and the British Library.
• The Kansas City Star interviewed Andrea Warren, author of Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London.
• This article about the bicentennial mentions that the new radio adaptation of Martin Chuzzlewit is a "reworking" set in Mumbai, India.
• Speaking of Martin Chuzzlewit, which I'm still reading . . . you guys didn't tell me it had a character named Pip in it! Imagine my delight when I got to the line "Pip's our mutual friend." What a quintessentially Dickensian sentence (even if Dickens himself had no inkling of it at the time)!

America, with all thy faults I love thee still

I've made it to chapter 16 of Martin Chuzzlewit, with Martin and Mark arriving in America. Just now Martin is talking to the editor of the New York Rowdy Journal (heh). I know my progress has been rather slow; it's my bad habit of reading many books at once.

So now I'm bracing myself a little, as I've been somewhat dreading this part. Dickens's quarrel with America -- though I realize he had his reasons -- is not one of my favorite things about him. I'm fond of my country, warts and all, and it makes me sad that he disliked it so much, at least on that first visit. I think that's partly why I waited so long to read this novel.

I have enjoyed it so far, though. I'm particularly eager right now to see if and how Tom and Mary are going to get together. Clearly they're made for each other, but equally clearly, they're the kind of "desperately honor-bound people" (as Robin McKinley brilliantly puts it in her novel Beauty) who wouldn't dream of letting down Martin -- the young hound. So I have a feeling this is going to be tricky . . .

Dickens in the 'New Yorker'

You would not believe how hard it is to find a copy of the New Yorker in Northern Virginia. I tried my local Barnes & Noble, where the August 29 issue was all sold out within the first couple of days. (Who cleans a store out of New Yorkers in two days? Northern Virginians do, I guess.) And I couldn't find it anywhere else, either.

As you will have gathered from my post title, the reason I wanted the August 29 issue is that it had an article on Dickens. It's called "Dickens in Eden," by Jill Lepore, and it's about her experience at Dickens Universe, or, as she calls it, "Dickens camp." She went to the one where they were studying Great Expectations.

At long last, I gave up trying to find the issue and just downloaded the article online. You can do the same here, for $5.99. But after all that, I'm sorry to say that I didn't care for the article that much. As Lepore studies the behavior of her fellow Dickens campers, she has a little of that partly bewildered, partly condescending tone that writers sometimes get when they're writing about an enthusiasm they don't share. If the New Yorker was going to bother to send someone to Dickens Universe, I wish they had sent someone who could really get into the experience. An air of faintly amused detachment can be irritating in any number of circumstances, but it's particularly irritating when you're talking about Dickens, who was such a force of nature that, I think, the only way to understand or to capture anything of his appeal is to jump in and let yourself get swept away.

Still, there are a few things to like here. There are some observations on the irony of how much America still loves Dickens, when Dickens had so little love for America. There's this insightful bit of literary analysis:

Dickens always wrote this way, cleaving a man from his conscience by splitting one character into two and then locking them together in a prison, or a contract, or a marriage. His novels are cunningly arranged to appear all a-clutter, like a Victorian parlor, ottomans and mahogany card tables higgledy-piggledy with chintz-covered armchairs and marble columns topped with busts of Roman statesmen, a curiosity shop of characters, but somewhere, caped by heavy velvet drapes, there always hangs a pair of pendant portraits. Twain had his Huck and his Jim. Dickens had his Chuzzlewits and his Tapleys, his Pips and his Magwitches, locked in a cell, bound by a knot, fastened by a screw.

And there's this:

[Trude] Hoffacker told me about a camp regular who never said much and then, after he'd missed a year, and she asked him why, confessed that he hadn't been able to get the book on tape. It turned out that he didn't know how to read.

Come to think of it, the entire article was worth reading just for that passage alone.

'Martin Chuzzlewit': a progress report

I'm only in chapter five, as a consequence of my usual practice of trying to read too many books at once. But already I'm enjoying the great contrast between Chuzzlewit, Pecksniff, and the rest of the money hoarders and grubbers, and Tom Pinch with his simple joys like friendship, books, and music. And what crafstmanship, to bring in Tom's chapter right after Pecksniff and his relatives have almost made us lose all hope for humanity. This is just lovely:

Now, the organist's assistant was a friend of Mr. Pinch's, which was a good thing, for he too was a very quiet gentle soul, and had been, like Tom, a kind of old-fashioned boy at school, though well-liked by the noisy fellow too. As good luck would have it (Tom always said he had great good luck) the assistant chanced that very afternoon to be on duty by himself, with no one in the dusty organ loft but Tom: so while he played, Tom helped him with the stops; and finally, the service being just over, Tom took the organ himself. It was then turning dark, and the yellow light that streamed in through the ancient windows in the choir was mingled with a murky red. As the grand tones resounded through the church, they seemed, to Tom, to find an echo in the depth of every ancient tomb, no less than in the deep mystery of his own heart. Great thoughts and hopes came crowding on his mind as the rich music rolled upon the air and yet among them -- something more grave and solemn in their purpose, but the same -- were all the images of that day, down to its very lightest recollection of childhood. The feeling that the sounds awakened, in the moment of their existence, seemed to include his whole life and being; and as the surrounding realities of stone and wood and glass grew dimmer in the darkness, these visions grew so much the brighter that Tom might have forgotten the new pupil and the expectant master, and have sat there pouring out his grateful heart till midnight, but for a very earthy old verger insisting on locking up the cathedral forthwith. So he took leave of his friend, with many thanks, groped his way out, as well as he could, into the now lamp-lighted streets, and hurried off to get his dinner.

Speaking of 'Martin Chuzzlewit' . . .

I just came across this lovely passage from G. K. Chesterton's introduction to it:

We go for a particular novel to Dickens as we go for a particular inn. We go to the sign of the Pickwick Papers. We go to the sign of the Rudge and Raven. We go to the sign of the Old Curiosities. We go to the sign of the Two Cities. We go to each or all of them according to what kind of hospitality and what kind of happiness we require.

Rather unfortunately, Chesterton goes on to argue that Martin Chuzzlewit is the exception to the rule, thanks to its "melancholy" feel. Still, the imagery is brilliant and, I think, profoundly true.

And Chesterton does go on to say, "He poured into this book genius that might make the mountains laugh, invention that juggled with the stars." So there's that!

And it begins

"As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can possibly sympathise with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great satisfaction to know that it undoubtedly descended in a direct line from Adam and Eve; and was, in the very earliest times, closely connected with the agricultural interest."

Of course you realize what this means: I have at last begun to keep my resolution of reading Martin Chuzzlewit!

7 Quick Takes Friday

• Lee Jackson of the blog The Cat's Meat Shop has a short piece by Dickens's son Alfred about the real-life crossing sweep who was probably "the original of poor Joe [sic] in 'Bleak House.'" The piece is an excerpt from an article that originally ran in Nash's.  
• Jackson has also created a map of "the many flats, houses, farms and blacking factories in which Charles Dickens lived, worked and played."
• Here's an interview with Tanika Gupta, writer of the adaptation of Great Expectations set in India. The play is currently touring Britain.
• Remember that letter opener that Dickens had made out of his dead cat's paw? . . . Yeah, I was trying to forget that too. But it's one of the objects that will be part of an overnight scavenger hunt in the New York Public Library next month. Go here for information on how to participate.
• Celebrated author Salman Rushdie opened a recent lecture at Duke University with a tribute to Dickens.
• Jonesing for some Dickensian screencaps? LiveJournal user chrs_vg has a "Project Charles Dickens" that includes downloadable caps from 13 different miniseries. Go here to check out the selection!
• And finally . . . we've seen "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" used in many different ways, but I don't think we've ever seen or heard it used quite like this.