Dickensblog

Exploring 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'

The Daily Beast has an installment on Dickens's final, unfinished book in its "Lost Masterpieces" series. I was a little surprised that the article didn't mention Pete Orford's new book on the subject, The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Charles Dickens' Unfinished Novel and Our Endless Attempts to End It (which I'm currently reading). But that omission aside, it's a good and educational read, both for those who already know the novel and those who are new to it. 

R.I.P. Stan Lee

You've probably heard a lot of tributes today to Marvel Comics's Stan Lee, who has passed away at the age of 95. But did you hear that he was a fan of Charles Dickens from his childhood? In this interview, he spoke of buying the novels of Dickens and other classic authors for 50 cents apiece when he was a boy. And in this one, he mentioned that Dickens's "interesting characters" helped him formulate his ideas about how to portray superheroes' personalities.

Man of a thousand (Dickensian) faces

It's the time of year when news of various A Christmas Carol productions around the world floods my inbox. Most of them don't get a mention here because there are just too many, but every once in a while I spot one that I think merits a mention.

Such a one is the one-man version of the show at Los Angeles's Geffen Playhouse. Jefferson Mays is the actor portraying every character -- more than 50 -- in the story, and there are few actors more fitted to the task. Mays has made a specialty of this kind of show, playing more than 40 characters in I Am My Own Wife, and later playing nine roles in A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (in which I was fortunate enough to see him). In short, as the Los Angeles Times puts it, he "is a performer who can unleash multitudes," and moreover, "is an ideal conduit for Dickens’ authorial voice . . . [who] relishes the sly observational humor as well as the horror." (Mays and his wife, Susan Lyons, also helped to adapt the story. In this interview he speaks of his history with A Christmas Carol, as well as his recently discovered love for The Pickwick Papers.)

Those of you who can make it to the Geffen during this run (which ends December 9) will most likely find it worth your while!  

And the winner is . . .

The drawing has been held, and Art K. is the winner of The Daily Charles Dickens! Congratulations, Art! I'll e-mail you to get your address. Thanks to all of you who participated; I really enjoyed reading your chosen quotes.

McDonagh has "a go" at Dickens

Martin McDonagh's new play A Very Very Very Dark Matter, currently running in London, is the playwright's attempt to "have a go at racist Dickens" (along with Hans Christian Andersen), according to director Matthew Dunster. I don't mean to descend into "whataboutism," or to suggest that Dickens was blameless in that area (he wasn't) -- but given some of the issues that have arisen in McDonagh's own work, I can't help but find his attitude a little ironic. But if any of our London readers see the play, we'd be interested to hear your take on it.

Dickens in the comics

'Tis the season for Dickensian graphic novels, it seems. I've already mentioned Olivia Twist, and now (or rather, in January) comes OLIVER, a "steampunk interpretation" from Image Comics. Meanwhile, British graphic novelist Posy Simmonds has written what the Guardian calls "a loose reworking of Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol, which casts an elderly female art dealer as Dickens’s muttering male misanthropist." Her book Cassandra Darke has not yet been published in the U.S., but Amazon has a few copies available from international sellers.  The Guardian has an excerpt here.

An animated 'Christmas Carol' 'retelling'

A new adaptation of the story is in the works, with a voice cast including Carey Mulligan, Andy Serkis, Daniel Kaluuya, Martin Freeman, Simon Russell Beale, Siân Phillips, and Leslie Caron. Including a Victorian toy theater, dance, and "a dark fantasy realm," it sounds to me a bit like A Christmas Carol with elements of The Nutcracker.

On dying well (Dickensian style)

Thomas Maloney of The Guardian lists Sydney Carton's death as one of the best fictional deaths, though he finds the character's "honorable" reflections not quite believable. (Honestly, if you can't think honorable thoughts when you're about to die, I don't know when you can think them.)

The Great American Read and 'Great Expectations'

Great Expectations came in 29th in PBS's poll on America's best-loved books. Go here to read their writeup on the book!

Giveaway: 'The Daily Charles Dickens'

Hello, everyone! I'm afraid I've been sadly neglecting this blog in recent weeks. I was busy finishing a book manuscript, which was a real time-sucker for a while. (It's not a book about Dickens, but it does mention him a couple of times!)

So I've gotten far behind and have a lot of catching up to do here. But to thank you all for your patience, I'm kicking off this blog resurgence with a giveaway of the new book The Daily Charles Dickens: A Year of Quotes (The University of Chicago Press, edited by James Kincaid). It's a very interesting little book of daily Dickens quotes, some of which are what you'd expect but others of which are quite surprising. As Kincaid explains in his introduction, his goal was to highlight Dickens's "open-ended play with language and its possibilities." 

If you would like to enter the giveaway, all you have to do is to leave in the comments section one Dickens quotation that you would include if you were compiling a book of daily Dickens quotes. A week from today (November 5), I'll draw one name from all the commenters, and inform the winner. Good luck!