Dickensblog

Steven Knight's next Dickens adaptation announced

The next Dickensian miniseries from the team behind the BBC/FX Christmas Carol will be . . . wait for it . . . Great Expectations. (It never seems to occur to anyone to give us a new Barnaby Rudge or Martin Chuzzlewit or Dombey and Son). Personally, I just hope it's a bit less grim than their previous outing. 

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.

 

Mamet on Dickens

Maybe you saw David Mamet's recent article "Charles Dickens Makes Me Want to Throw Up" in the Wall Street Journal. As you might expect, my first reaction to the article was anger. But, surprisingly, that didn't last. 

Mamet is, of course, a renowned playwright. But when it comes to judging literature, he seems to have left all his writing skills in his other pants. His article is not a critique but a polemic; he throws grumpy invective at Dickens like a prankster throwing eggs at a house. He trots out the long-debunked "penny-a-liner" accusation (and doesn't even get that right, since the original accusation involved being paid per word); he uses words like "turgid" and "tortured" to describe Dickens's prose, on the basis of one short innocuous quote from Dombey and Son, arbitrarily compared with other short innocuous quotes from De Quincey and Butler. He offers grudging respect to A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol, but, he says, "to the rest, good riddance."

This is simply visceral loathing making a barely half-hearted attempt to pass itself off as literary criticism. As is often said, one man's meat is another man's poison, so we must allow Mamet his loathing, misguided as it is. But why he should feel that way about a body of work that has brought delight to nearly two centuries' worth of readers, and why he should feel the pressing need to proclaim such ill-natured feelings from the housetops instead of confessing them with humility, is anybody's guess. (I've never been able to feel very interested in Melville's work, for instance, but I don't count that as a virtue in myself.)

So anger is, in the end, not quite the right reaction. A reader who has feasted on Dickens must ultimately feel, for a man who can find almost nothing but poison in that magnificent spread, the most profound pity.

Delighted by 'Dombey'

Blogger Julie Davis of Happy Catholic's Bookshelf continues to make her way through the works of Dickens. (We linked to some of her earlier posts about him back in 2012 and 2013.) In her new post on Dombey and Son, she writes, "There were times . . . when the power of Dickens’ writing washed over me and left me bereft of my own words." 

Dickens in the 'Washington Post'

"In 1847, an English cleaning woman was extremely excited to learn that the boy lodging in her employer’s house was 'the son of the man that put together Dombey' — that is, the son of Charles Dickens. The woman could neither read nor write, but she lived above a snuff shop where, on the first Monday of every month, a community of friends would gather to read aloud the latest installment of 'Dombey and Son,' which had begun serialization on Oct. 1, 1846. By that time, the monthly installments of Dickens’s novels — which started with 'The Pickwick Papers' in 1836 — were such a staple of British culture that an illiterate woman with no access to the actual book knew the author’s work intimately."

Hillary Kelly, The Washington Post

Read the rest of Kelly's article -- which focuses on the technique and the possible future of serialization -- here. And here's a discussion question: If illiterate cleaning ladies were huge fans of Dickens back when he was writing, why is it that literate and educated high schoolers have such trouble understanding him today? Is it just that the uneducated people of his own time understood the cultural references better? Or is there more to it? (The common phenomenon of high schoolers hating Dickens at first sight came up again in conversation recently, which is why it's on my mind.)

The old, old fashion

Today marks the 144th anniversary of Charles Dickens's death.

"The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old fashion -- Death!  

"Oh thank GOD, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of Immortality!"

Dombey and Son, Chapter 16

Everything he can give, and more

"His genius, then, is at one with the genius of the form of the novel itself: Dickens willed into existence the most capacious and elastic and versatile kind of novel that could be, one big enough for his vast sentimental yearnings and for every impulse and fear and hesitation in him that countervailed those yearnings too. Never parsimonious and frequently contradictory, he always gives us everything he can, everything he's planned to give, and then more."

Jonathan Lethem, Introduction to Dombey and Son (Modern Library Paperback Edition, 2003)

Dickens in color

Flavorwire is featuring some beautiful vintage color illustrations from various works by Dickens, by various artists.

Will Joss Whedon tackle Dickens?

The acclaimed writer/director tells Empire Online that he'd love to make a film version of Dombey and Son. Though I'm intrigued by the idea, I was brought up short by his advice to Florence Dombey: "Get a pickaxe! Stop forgiving everybody!" Because let's face it: If anyone would give Florence a pickaxe, it would be Whedon.

Charles Dickens, feminist?

Not everyone would agree, but Dr. John Mark Reynolds demonstrates that Dickens makes a pretty convincing argument for basic feminism -- "the equal and full humanity of women and men before Providence" -- in Dombey and Son.