The dark side of Dickens

Christopher Hitchens takes on "the dark side of Dickens" in this month's Atlantic. Before you read, you should know, if you don't already, that this is the man who tried to do a hatchet job on Mother Teresa. In other words, his criticism should be taken with a large grain of salt.

I'm not arguing that Charles Dickens was a flawless man, for you know and I know that's not true. Not by a long shot. And I'd be fine with a piece that pointed this out in a reasoned, thoughtful way. Hitchens does not do this. His piece starts out all right, but then, when he gets to what I suppose must be termed the meat of it, he launches into a bunch of unrelated facts plucked from the pages of the Slater biography, thrown together without any context or explanation, meant to show that there was something "a trifle sinister" in Dickens's attitudes toward various people and groups.

Some of these facts are indeed troublesome, but they at least deserve some background to help present them, and Dickens himself, in a more balanced way. I don't like salacious, teasing details strung together just to get attention, without any depth to them.

In short, I don't like hatchet jobs . . . unless they're done on people like Christopher Hitchens.

And now you've seen the dark side of Gina.

Comments

[David Perdue]

You're right Gina, this attack is pretty flimsy. As a lover of Dickens I have always thought that the hardest part to swallow was the way he handled the separation with Catherine, the horrible public gaffs he committed in the process, and the deplorable treatment of her for the remainder of his life. If Hitchens truly wanted to portray a dark Dickens he need only go there.

[Gina]

The "Weekly Standard" has a more balanced review of the Slater book, but I'm afraid it's subscriber-only. The magazine can be found at most bookstores, though.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/writer-trade