Dickensblog

Dickens Universe in danger

First Dickens World, now the Dickens Universe. Not good at all. Granted, one's an amusement park and the other's an academic conference, but still, having both of them endangered seems like a bad omen -- not to mention a major bummer for fans. I had actually hoped to attend that conference someday. I wish I were a Cheeryble brother and could send them tons of money (and maybe throw in a few bucks for the Poison Control Center while I was at it).

Someone get the guillotine

Literary website The Second Pass has the ever-loving gall to suggest that A Tale of Two Cities be "fired from the canon":

No country was more foreign to Dickens’ sensibility than France. No event was more antithetical to his imagination than the French Revolution. So it’s unsurprising that A Tale of Two Cities makes for such an odd and uninspiring read.

I'll go out on a limb here and make a prediction: A Tale of Two Cities will still be inspiring people worldwide centuries after The Second Pass has been forgotten.

(Link courtesy of the LA Times)

Dickens for dyslexics

An oldie but a goodie from novelist John Irving, who as a teenager struggled with "undiagnosed dyslexia," quoted in the LA Times:

I read Charles Dickens when I was 14 or 15. It might be hard for many 14, 15-year-olds today to read Dickens. That language seems so old fashioned, if not exactly dated, to us now -- the amount of detail, the sheer complexities of those stories and plots. But those were the novels I read that made me want to write novels. If I had read, frankly, some more modern or post-modern novels at the time, I might have wanted to do something else. I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story. Those old 19th century novels, all of them long, all of them complicated, all of them plotted. Not just Dickens, but especially Dickens, but also George Eliot, Thomas Hardy. And among the Americans, Melville and Hawthorne always meant more to me than Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald. I'm not a modern guy.

That's telling 'em. All those people who moan that they were "forced" to read Dickens in high school and it was way too hard -- I'll bet the majority of them didn't have that kind of obstacle to overcome. If a dyslexic 14-year-old can fall in love with Dickens, I really don't think he's all that inaccessible.

Irving, by the way, wrote a fantastic introduction to my edition of Great Expectations (Bantam, 1986). I thought his take on the revised ending was way better than Dorothy L. Sayers's take, which is saying something huge, because I adore Sayers. But he liked the second ending and she didn't, so he gets my vote on that one.

A poster for 'Eine Weihnachts-Geschichte'

. . . that is, A Christmas Carol.

And if you can pronounce the German version, you're WAY ahead of me.

'A Christmas Carol': The video game

No, really. It comes out in the U.S. in November.

I wonder what happens if you lose. Maybe Tiny Tim clubs you with his crutch?

The Charles Dickens–Michael Jackson connection

Apparently there was one. Who knew?

When Harry (and David) met Lexi

A young writer called lexi7316 has posted a terrific essay at Teen Ink about being torn between two loves:

After I’d spent months dreaming of his arrival, Harry Potter, the seventh and final, was at last mine. Thoughts of young Copperfield and his foolish wife, Dora, were swept aside as my elated mind cleared room for incantations and potion recipes.

With excitement, I tore open the package, freeing Harry from his bonds. Cardboard shreds fell to the floor as I held the book for the first time. Its brand-new yellow cover shone like the blazing sun. Mine, all mine! I hugged the thick novel to my chest, welcoming Harry into my arms, welcoming him home.

Eating wasn’t necessary; I had a private date with Harry Potter planned for this evening. I carried him to my room and placed him on my pillow. I unconsciously put Copperfield in my nightstand drawer, hiding him in the darkness while I slowly opened the cover of my new treasure.

Did Lexi's heart ever return to David, or did he lose her to Harry forever? Click here to find out! (Be aware that there are some spoilers for both books.) I've submitted a comment inviting Lexi to Dickensblog -- hopefully they allow URLs in their comment section!

The poster of my dreams

Thanks to Chris for supplying links to two great paintings that both show a panoramic view of some of Dickens's greatest characters.

And it turns out that the Charles Dickens Museum Online Shop actually sells posters of the Dickens's Dream painting by Robert W. Buss! If you're guessing that I've already ordered mine, you're absolutely correct. :-)

More Emmy buzz for 'Little Dorrit'

. . . and an assessment of the competition, from the LA Times.

The master's pen

This article by Sam Anderson isn't really about Dickens; it's about literary obsessions in general, and one writer's obsession with Albert Camus in particular. However, it does include this highly intriguing line:

I visited Victor Hugo’s house in Paris and Charles Dickens’s house in London, where I wrote some words with what I was told was Charles Dickens’s pen.

Whoa.

Can you imagine having the chance to write with Charles Dickens's pen? (Quill pen, I wonder?) And what words would you write, anyway? "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"? "Bah! Humbug"? "Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism"? "If anything turns up"? "Barkis is willin'"? "Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears . . ."? "It is a far, far better thing that I do . . ."?

Or would it be far too presumptuous to copy the master's own words with the master's own pen? But then, what would you write?

(And just how much of a bribe did Anderson have to pay to use that pen, anyway? I could start saving up. . . .)