Dickensblog

'The Fraud': Not quite a review

As you may recall, I was intrigued by Zadie Smith's New Yorker article about how Charles Dickens kept pushing his way into her new historical novel, The Fraud. So I thought I would read and review The Fraud here, with an emphasis on Dickens's role in it.

I regret to say I could not finish the book. I tried hard, but I couldn't. Smith does have a marvelous way with words, and I thought for a while that would carry me through, but I couldn't deal with her characters -- her clueless William Harrison Ainsworth; his shrill second wife, Sarah; and least of all her point-of-view character, Eliza Touchet.

Eliza is one of those anachronisms so beloved of modern novelists, from YA to literary fiction: a pious Victorian widow who has rough sex indiscriminately with half the people she comes across, without a second thought. I don't think I'm a prude -- I don't require my reading matter to be scrubbed clean of all sexual references -- but I'm weary of this nonsensical trope of characters who treat sex like a handshake, often in direct and yet casual opposition to their era or belief system or any number of other conventions. It's become boilerplate writing, and boilerplate is beneath someone of Smith's talent.

Beyond that, most of her characters didn't seem to like each other or themselves very much, and their author didn't seem to like them either. Spending time with them was becoming emotionally exhausting.

So I gave up on the story. But I did skip ahead a little just to get an idea of how Dickens featured in it, and I thought I'd share a bit of that with you, in lieu of a proper review. The following is an excerpt from the chapter "Dickens is Dead!":

Dolly and the Barbie doll

Seems like everything has a connection to Barbie right now -- and Dickens is no exception! Check out Atlas Obscura's article on the link between Barbie and Barnaby Rudge's Dolly Varden.

Rehabilitation by Dickens

This story has been all over the Internet: A British would-be terrorist was sentenced to read classic literature, including Dickens (specifically, A Tale of Two Cities). You can read about it here, here, and here. Naturally I'm very intrigued by the idea and eager to hear how it goes! I've always believed that reading literature, including reading Dickens, is good for the soul -- if we get follow-up reports, this should make a valuable case study.

Charles Dickens on slavery

As we know, slavery was one of the things that most offended Dickens when he first visited America. Washington Post writer Norman Leahy appeals to him while writing about the Confederate statues in Richmond, Va.: 

"Consider Charles Dickens, who visited Richmond in March 1842 as part of a tour of the United States and Canada. After a bumpy, soggy and occasionally harrowing coach ride to Fredericksburg, Dickens took the train to Richmond. It’s in this stretch of the journey he sees and feels the evil in the air:

"In this district, as in all others where slavery sits brooding (I have frequently heard this admitted, even by those who are its warmest advocates:) there is an air of ruin and decay abroad, which is inseparable from the system."

Read more here.

Dickens and van Gogh

Did you know that Dickens was Vincent van Gogh's favorite author? Tate Britain is getting the word out with its exhibition "Van Gogh and Britain." In its review of the exhibition, The Guardian explains, 

Van Gogh loved Dickens and Eliot for the way they took the everyday details of modest lives and elevated them into something luminous. Here was social realism, in all its unloveliness, transformed into a kind of moral grandeur. A few years later, and on his way to becoming the artist who would invest old shoes, ragged sunflowers and potato-eating peasants with powerful feeling, Van Gogh wrote to his brother: “My whole life is aimed at making the things from everyday life that Dickens describes and these artists draw.”

In fact, the paper reports, van Gogh's beloved Starry Night is said to be based on one of the most powerful scenes in Hard Times.

The Economist adds, "In a number of the paintings in 'L’Arlésienne', a series made between 1888 and 1890 . . . van Gogh carefully inscribed 'A Christmas Carol' on the spine of a book. The choice of title and author was deliberate: he had read the novel every year since childhood. When van Gogh moved back in with his parents in 1879 they complained that he did nothing but devour Charles Dickens from morning to night."

Sounds like our kind of guy!  

Famous last words

The ending of A Christmas Carol makes Ron Charles's list of "the 23 most unforgettable last sentences in fiction" in The Washington Post.

Recent Dickens mentions

A number of good new "books about books" have recently come out, quite a few of which offer Dickens recommendations. (I've read all the way through the first two -- with the others, I've just read the Dickens sections so far!)

• My friend Karen Swallow Prior, author of Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me, has a new book out called On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, in which she uses various novels and short stories to highlight different virtues. A Tale of Two Cities illustrates the concept of justice. (I got to read an early version of the chapter and offer feedback, which was an honor and a treat!) Karen's excellent book recently was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Publisher's Weekly.
• In I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life, Anne Bogel (who blogs at Modern Mrs. Darcy) names David Copperfield as one of the books that helped her to come of age as a reader.
• Book Girl: A Journey through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life  by Sarah Clarkson states, "There is no one quite like Dickens" and names him one of the author's "most beloved" writers. Clarkson pays tribute to David Copperfield for its striking imagery and understanding of human nature, Bleak House for its quietly faithful heroine, and Oliver Twist for its suspense. And she quotes a friend who recommends Dombey and Son and Martin Chuzzlewit. 
• James Mustich's 1,000 Books to Read before You Die: A Life-Changing List has a great chapter on Dickens. "It's as if the author has not set out to write a novel," he observes, "but has been dropped into a pulsing reality he has to write his way through, much in the way we must construct a life." Mustich specifically recommends David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, Dombey and Son, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations.

 

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.

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.)

An honor for 'The Signal-Man'

When The Sunday Times created their list of the 100 best short stories, Dickens's "The Signal-Man" was one of them. The Times called it "nerve-jangling."