Dickensblog

Of the making of many books there is no end

Here comes yet another story about Dickens and family (long article, so scroll WAY down):

It's perhaps [Tom] Keneally's talent for self-invention that attracts him to the tale of Charles Dickens's younger boys -- Edward and Alfred -- and their little-known lives in Australia. Keneally began working on an imagined life of the duo several years ago, but after several field trips to Wilcannia and beyond he dropped the fictional version of the project. It will feature strongly in volume two of Australians, as nonfiction.

There are some interesting details:

The next son to arrive is the youngest, the much-loved Edward. Burdened since infancy with the monicker Plorn -- short for Plornishmaroontigoonter . . .

What the heck?

But weird nicknames or no, Plorn seems to have had a good head on his shoulders:

Edward eventually finds his feet and is elected to the NSW parliament of Parkes (hero of the first volume of Australians), in 1889.

"His most famous moment," Keneally says with an enthusiasm that augurs well for the next book, "occurs in parliament when he was challenged by a certain W.N. Willis."

"My late honoured father once wrote 'Barkis is willin'," intoned Edward as he took the floor. "If he had been here tonight, he would have said Willis is barkin'."

Awesome.

A loving heart

"Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy man in hers."

David Copperfield, Chapter 9

Such is life

The lull had a sedative and philosophical influence on Joe, who followed me out into the road to say, as a parting observation that might do me good, "On the rampage, Pip, and off the rampage, Pip; such is life!"

Great Expectations, Chapter 15

Feeling creative?

I think maybe you are. I sense a tremendous current of Dickens-related creativity running through this place. Just look at some of the cool stuff you guys are doing. Christy writes beautiful stories about Dickens and The Pretender. Marian sews gorgeous Sydney Carton costumes for dolls. (Can one be in love with a doll? Because I think I am.) Nibs makes great Dickens LOLZ -- "Excuse me, madam, whilst I slap ur dog" is my favorite -- and is jonesing to write a Uriah-Heep-themed sequel to David Copperfield. And I've probably left a bunch of you out.

I even found a lovely new piece of Little Dorrit fanfiction the other day. Technically, it wasn't written by a frequenter of this blog -- at least, not that I know of -- but I'm linking to it here anyway, because it's my blog and I can. ;-)

If you've been working on some sort of Dickens-related project, I'd love it if you'd post a link here. And if you haven't, why not give it a try? Graphics, stories, all are welcome. If the stories are very short, you can post them in the comment section in their entirety; otherwise, better just make it a link. As some of you have pointed out, no one can write like The Inimitable -- hence the nickname. But surely that needn't prevent a few takeoffs. I mean, if Andrew Davies can give it a try, why can't we? (I know, I know, I really need to knock that off.) The point is, we have some pretty talented people here, so it would be great if you'd share your talents with the rest of us!

And I'll just be over in the corner, working on a top-secret little Dickens project of my own. . . .

'A Christmas Carol' at Comic-Con, part 2

More reports are here, here, here, and here. (A horror film? Not literally, I hope and trust.) Despite all the excitement over the previews for Alice in Wonderland (complete with visit from Johnny Depp) and New Moon, it sounds like A Christmas Carol held its own.

 

Dickenspalooza!

The Washington Times notes the large number of books about Dickens (or imitating Dickens) that's come out lately:

To paraphrase Voltaire, if Charles Dickens (1812-70) had not existed, some enterprising novelist would have had to invent him. Fortunately for us, several now have reinvented the beloved Victorian novelist, in an enticing flurry of books based on Dickens' hectically industrious life as well as his imperishably popular fiction. 2009 may be the best year Dickens has enjoyed since the 1830s and the dawning of his then-unparalleled and still remarkable celebrity.

And now for a discussion question:

It appears -- from my own admittedly unscientific and spotty research -- that while the majority of modern novels about Jane Austen are new takes on her stories and characters, the majority of modern novels about Dickens are about the man himself. If I've seen one Pride and Prejudice sequel, I've seen seventeen thousand of them, whereas most of the Dickens-related books cited in this article deal with incidents, real or imagined, in the life of the author, not in the lives of his characters.

I know there have been efforts over the years to finish Edwin Drood or make up Estella's backstory or what not. (I even made a botched attempt at the latter for NaNoWriMo one year, giving up two days in. I was simply not cut out to write a novel in thirty days.) But why do you suppose that, in general, these days we have so much of The Secret Life and Loves and Habits of Charles Dickens as Told by His Wife/Friends/Rivals/Servants/Publishers/Admirers, and so little of, say, Pip's Children or The Revenge of Uriah Heep or How Mr. Meagles Finally Snapped and Beat the Snot out of Henry Gowan? (Come on, admit it, you'd love to read that one.)

'A Christmas Carol' at Comic-Con

Reports are here, here, here, and here. It sounds like the showing of the footage and the interview with the director went well and got some positive responses.

(But hey, Zemeckis, let's not be running down the Mickey Mouse version. It's one of my favorites.)

What would Dickens do?

(No blasphemy intended!)

Time for me to explain what's going on around here. A few months ago, I was struck by a post by Jennifer Greenholt, over at Literati in the World. She was actually quoting a post of mine about Jenny Hartley's Dickens and the House of Fallen Women. But she went further than I did, by talking about how Dickens's example of philanthropy should help shape our own lives:

This is a poignant reminder to me and literati everywhere that we should not have our noses so firmly implanted in books (or computer screens) that we become indifferent to suffering or lethargic in our pursuit of change for the better.

This has stuck with me ever since. And its impact was strengthened by this reminder in Brian Murray's article the other day: "Dickens practiced what he preached. Surely no other great writer, before or since, ever spent so much time and energy supporting charitable organizations and benevolent funds."

The long and the short of it is, I decided that a Dickensblog really needs to be doing a little practical good in the world (besides just making literature fans happy, I mean), if it's going to honor its patron author properly.*

So on the left, you'll see two new widgets. One is for Free Rice, which lets you donate rice to the hungry by taking vocabulary quizzes. Dickens, I feel sure, would have been utterly delighted by the idea of turning words into food for the poor. The other is for the Somaly Mam Foundation. Mam has risked everything over and over again to help rescue Cambodian girls from the sexual slavery in which she herself was once trapped. She was one of the Time 100 this year, in the category of "Heroes & Icons," and you can read more about her at their website. From the story told in Hartley's book, it seems clear that this would have been a cause dear to Dickens's heart.

In addition to featuring their widget on the blog, I will donate all proceeds that I receive from Amazon sales on this blog to Somaly Mam's organization. That hasn't amounted to much so far -- which is okay; I know people often like to buy books at their own local bookstores. I do it myself. But the Amazon widget is on the lower right if you'd like to use it, and I just wanted you to know that a portion of everything you spend through it will go to help out a good cause.

I hope all this will serve as an opportunity and inspiration for us to help "make some slight provision for the poor and destitute," and pay tribute to the author we love in the way that he would have liked best.

*I would be remiss if I didn't mention that David Perdue of the Charles Dickens Page realized this long before I did. Go over to his site and scroll down to the bottom of page, left side, to donate to his featured charities.

Household words

Over the next day or two, I'll be tinkering with the layout of the blog a little bit. There won't be major changes -- I just want to add one or two things, and to do that I need to move some other things around a bit, so that it will all look nice and even instead of lopsided. Just wanted to give you all a heads-up in case you come along in the middle of the tinkering and see everything looking weird -- it'll all be straightened out in the end!

Tragedy of the mind

Did Dickens have a "psychological breakdown" that helped cause his marriage to fall apart? Gaynor Arnold, author of a new novel based on the life of Dickens's wife, Catherine, suggests that he did. There seems to be a good deal of evidence backing her up. For one thing, there's the well-known quote from his daughter Kate about how her father was "like a madman" at the time; for another, there were the tremendous emotional highs and lows that he experienced for much of his life. Quite a few researchers have suspected that he suffered from manic depression.

The end of Dickens's marriage isn't something I enjoy writing about, or reading about. Even when you know your heroes have flaws, it's never pleasant to be reminded of them. However, there's this advantage: We know a lot more about mental illness now than we did then. Looking back at that time through the lens of the knowledge we now possess, we can have, as Arnold says, a little more understanding and sympathy for both spouses in that doomed marriage.