Dickensblog

Praise for 'David Copperfield'

"At its best fiction is not opposed to or inconsistent with real life, but rather its defense and articulation. And whether by calling our attention to the varied sorts of people we already know without noticing, or by sounding out our own inner selves with whom we have neglected to become acquainted, Charles Dickens shows himself to be a high practitioner of this advocacy. And it is in David Copperfield that he reaches the height of his practice."

Paul Joseph Prezzia, The Civilized Reader, Crisis

A passion for human peculiarity

Many of the book’s admirers detect an artistic falling off as David passes from childhood into manhood. And while I don’t myself see any slackening of brilliance up through the final page, David’s harrowing early years are unforgettably vivid. Everywhere the boy turns, he meets singular souls. Dickens rivals Shakespeare in his fascination with nature’s sheer prodigality in creating so heterogeneous a troupe under the heading Homo sapiens. A passion for human peculiarity fortifies most of Dickens’s fiction, but it shows special potency when filtered through the eyes of the boy David, who is such a scrupulous, fervent interpreter of the world. He has to be. For him, a grasping of diverse personal motivations isn’t merely a satisfying of curiosity. It’s a necessity. David’s future, his deliverance from the forces determined to annihilate him, depends on his ability to construe character. 

Brad Leithauser, "Big Reading: A Hike through Dickens," Page-Turner, New Yorker, October 18, 2012

The magic of 'Great Expectations'

Not everyone appreciates the magic of Great Expectations, but that's the thing about magic: it doesn't work on everyone. In order for magic to work, first you have to believe. This passage in Great Expectations about Joe's Christ-like love is one I always read aloud when I teach this novel, usually during the last class we will spend on the book. One semester, the class I taught was unusually large. The course had become popular in the department, and I was always willing to sign high-achieving students into the class no matter how overfilled it had become. Because the class was not only large but also populated with an abundance of well-read, confident, and loquacious students (several of whom were on the university's champion debate team), our classes were always lively -- sometimes downright boisterous. One student practically turned Pip-hostility into a sport. Later, after had graduated and become a mission worker in Guatemala, he emailed me to tell me that he had just read Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities -- and loved it. That was a partial victory: at least Dickens, if not Great Expectations, was redeemed.

Helplessness to passion

"Let us also speak of Dickens, who is often undervalued because he hits the eternal verities on the nose. Sure, we cannot help being aware of his in-your-face morality, yet we are moved by it nonetheless, because, tossing sophistication to the wind, we wish to see the just rewarded and the unjust punished. No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil. Both Miss Havisham and Mrs. Macbeth probably would have preferred to behave themselves."

Roger Rosenblatt, "How to Write Great," Sunday Book Review, New York Times, July 27, 2012 (H/T Enuma Okoro)

I recommend reading the whole article -- it's really good. Also, there's a Tale of Two Cities reference elsewhere in it!

Happy 200th birthday, Charles Dickens!

"Charles Dickens was born at midnight on February 7, 1812. . . . It was reported that the newborn baby began to cry as the clock struck 12, and many feel that his voice is as real today as it was 200 years ago."
Raymond M. Lane

"The reason I love him so deeply is that, having experienced the lower depths, he never ceased, till the day he died, to commit himself, both in his work and in his life, to trying to right the wrongs inflicted by society, above all, perhaps by giving the dispossessed a voice. From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the people, and the people loved him for it, as do I."
Simon Callow

"I hold him in my heart of hearts as a man apart from all other men, as one apart from all other beings."
Mary "Mamie" Dickens

The shock of Dickens

I was reading today about Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's upcoming book, Becoming Dickens (to be released next month by Belknap Press). I love this endorsement from John Bowen, of the University of York: "Becoming Dickens never takes Dickens for granted, but helps us to be surprised--shocked even--that he existed, worked and wrote in the way that he did."

Charles Dickens, flashy dresser

The blog Past Is Present shares a rather amusing diary entry from a bank cashier who saw Dickens during his American tour in 1842.

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!

The art of enjoying everybody

Smollett was coarse; but Smollett was also cruel. Dickens was frequently horrible; he was never cruel. The art of Dickens was the most exquisite of arts: it was the art of enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a very human writer, had to be a very human being; he had his faults and sensibilities in a strong degree; and I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed everybody in his daily life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and everybody has enjoyed everybody in those books even till to-day. His books are full of baffled villains stalking out or cowardly bullies kicked downstairs. But the villains and the cowards are such delightful people that the reader always hopes the villain will put his head through a side window and make a last remark; or that the bully will say one thing more, even from the bottom of the stairs.

G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature, quoted by Kevin Belmonte in The Quotable Chesterton (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 62.

Eat your Wheaties

Today one of my favorite contemporary novelists, Jan Karon, is coming out with a new novel. In honor of the occasion, here's a Dickensian quote from one of her earlier novels. (The setup: Father Tim, the protagonist, is making his foster son, Dooley, read aloud every night while the latter is suspended from school.)

"That was a grand reading from Hamlet. We'll have Dickens tonight."

"Who's Dickens?"

"Only one of the finest storytellers in the English language, but long-winded, so eat your Wheaties."

"Man," said Dooley, wishing he were back in school.

A Light in the Window, chapter 15