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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

A life of Dickensian jollity

20:13 / 23.03.03

To this day, I cannot fathom how I managed to make it through to the age of four-and-twenty without ever having read any Dickens, but the fact remains that I did; and it was only on the repeated recommendations of my fellow Barbeloids (among whom Flyboy was conspicuous) that I took up that esteemed author's notable work, Great Expectations, and found that my enjoyment greatly exceeded my expectations.

(I'm going to stop that now)

But I have been genuinely surprised to find myself really enjoying Dickens - I've also read Bleak House and have just solaced myself during a particularly nasty feverish cold with David Copperfield. I even found myself indulging in a fit of sentimental weeping over Dora's death in David Copperfield, though perhaps I should attribute that to my enfeebled state rather than Dickens' superior art; and certainly it hsn't stopped Dora Spenlow from supplating Fanny Price at the top of my All-Time Top Ten Most Irritating Female Characters (19th Century).

I don't think I'm approaching the books with any particular critical relish - I just like to get immersed in a damned thick square book; I like to have a lot of plot-lines to follow through, I like a lot of diversions and a discursive narrative style; and I like to be able to read the story and get really involved in it without being conscious of what the author's trying to do all the time. I don't mean to suggest that Dickens is a simple or simplistic author, though he can be sometimes I think (judging by the little I've read), or that he's not worthy of critical notice or judgement, but rather that I find I don't read his books at a remove in the way I do with modern literary stuff.

I think that, of the three I've read (and I'm going to have a crack at Nicholas Nickelby in a bit), Great Expectations was perhaps the most entirely successful, but I liked Bleak House the most, perhaps because the plot was so intricate. Not that it was without its drawbacks - Esther Summerson is really irritatingly winsome as a narrator - but as a compensation there's also all the marvellous business in Chancery, and with horrible Mr Krook, and George and his military friend... I need to digest David Copperfield a bit more, but only a wee bit, and then I shall return (you have been warned).

Anyone else carry a torch for good old Boz?

The Return Of Rothkoid

20:52 / 23.03.03

My mother kept on at me to read A Tale Of Two Cities, and I never did. Couldn't get past the opening. And I somehow shied away from Dickens because of that. However, I remember having to write an essay on Great Expectations - as usual for second-year, I was doing it the night before, and remember being actively involved in the story while I was meant to be whipping through it in order to get the essay done; I read it completely anyway, which is probably a mark of great narrative. It rocked, and I should read it again, I suppose.

12:48 / 24.03.03

I did Bleak House for either O-Level or A-Level - I can't remember which, it was all so long ago, and consequently hate the thing with a passion, after analyzing it to pieces.

But I am very partial to dipping into Sketches by Boz, which while not part of the Dickens novelistic canon proper is a very entertaining collection of character studies which all aspiring novelists and journalists should be forced to read in the workhouse before lights out.

16:47 / 24.03.03

A couple of points which might be worth more discussion:

- Dickens' influence on other writers. I was thinking about this last night, trying to remember what the catalogues of eccentric characters reminded me of, and (at two in the morning of course) realised that I had been vaguely recollecting my reading of the Gormenghast trilogy; and I do think that Peake's grotesques owe a lot to Dickens. There must be tons more, some even more off-beat than that one...

- the importance of Dickens' descriptions of London - something which I know has been picked up on by Ackroyd and Sinclair - was he the first writer to really create London as an imaginative topos? I'm struggling to think of anyone earlier, certainly in terms of fiction.

Thorts?

18:20 / 24.03.03

I loved Great Expectations --which someone here really really hates, sleaze I think-- but I could never get into Bleak House, if it's the book I'm thinking about. I know what you mean about not approaching the books critically. I think that with GE, I liked the characters immediately & that was that. Oh wait, no... it wasn't Bleak House that I couldn't read, it was Hard Times.

So BH is a good read? Perhaps next I will take a turn at Dickens, how many books did he write again?

Wanted, Wanted, Dolores Haze

19:30 / 24.03.03

I can't think of many other authors in which setting plays such a great part, London is like an extra character in most of the Dickens books I've read. Interestingly, in (I think) David Copperfield there's a descpription of some piece of countryside, and it reads more or less like Dickens is describing a 'country cottage' scene from a greetings card on his desk? That (for me) sharpened what it was that was good about his descriptions of London, that it was a place he cared about: since he held that an author should never like their characters, it makes the books a far richer experience to read about at least a place which he liked.

By the way, has anyone else read The Pickwick Papers? They're awesome, basically have no plot at all but the writing's excellent and very amusing.

20:14 / 24.03.03

Here's an index to Dickens' work online. Honestly I haven't read half of these, I had no idea there was all this... it's a little bit more relaxing to tackle Jane Austen or George Eliot, isn't it?

20:24 / 24.03.03

Well, I make it fourteen-and-a-half novels plus misc stories, journalism and non-fiction. That's not too bad, surely? Cant' be that much worse than Eliot... Maybe a bit much to tackle head-on, but in bits it would only take a couple of years to get through the lot; and I bet you could miss out some of them without repining too much.

08:20 / 25.03.03

Shit, I meant Hard Times and not Bleak House as well. D'oh. Never read Bleak House.

09:22 / 25.03.03

Well it's time ya did, Sax -- for his imaginative relocation of the horrors of the trad. Gothic castle/landscape in London's 'labyrinth of streets' and reeking graveyards, and the Gothic mansion of Chesney Wold, if nothing else.

Of Chesney Wold, what can match:

But the evil of it is, that it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller's cotton and fine wool, and cannot hear the rushing of larger worlds ... It is a deadened world, and its growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air. ... On Sundays, the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit breaks into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste of the ancient Dedlocks in their graves.

Dickens' evocation of smell here is entirely new in the fiction of his time. He taps into all the unwholesomeness and horrors of intramural burial, particularly the seeping mephitis which even the use of incense in churches could not disguise.

15:36 / 25.03.03

Wow, timing. I just wrote about Great Expectations for part of my honors thesis. I usually enjoy Dickens a lot, but I guess I'm not 100% sure what that means. On the one hand I think his books don't always get the, um, academic respect that they deserve because 1) they're comic and 2) they're mass art - you know, they reward close-reading but don't require it. But on the other hand I find some of his novels - Oliver Twist comes to mind - pretty cringe-inducing. But definitely Bleak House, which I just read last year, is really worth checking out.

19:55 / 25.03.03

Dickens' evocation of smell here is entirely new in the fiction of his time. He taps into all the unwholesomeness and horrors of intramural burial, particularly the seeping mephitis which even the use of incense in churches could not disguise.

Do you know, it had never occurred to me that all that horror of grisly old churches might actually have had a rational basis. Thank you for that. I am reminded of Urn-Buriall... where's my copy... the passage about grave-wax. I'll find it.

Cavatina, you are much the best person to whom to address this: do you think Dickens is important in relocating the Gothick tropes of the Romantic era to the later Victorian sensation novels? Only Bleak House struck me as having, as you say, lots of Gothic elements to it - in particular at Chesney Wold - and yet to use those elements in the same way that Wilkie Collins does in Armadale (in which the fens take on a distinctly sinister aspect). But I haven't read enough real Gothic stuff to know...

10:31 / 27.03.03

Very briefly, Kit-Cat - yes. The urban Gothic of Dickens (and Reynolds) evolves into a 'suburban Gothic' in Collins' Armadale:

Fairweather Vale proved to be a new neighbourhood, situated below the high ground of Hampstead, on the southern side. The day was overcast, and the place looked very dreary ... At one end we came upon a wilderness of half-finished villas dotted about ... At one corner of this scene of desolation stood a great overgrown dismal house, plastered with drab-coloured stucco, and surrounded by a naked, unfinished garden, without a shrub or flower in it -- frightful to behold.

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:49 / 28.03.03

Quick point - very interesting that people have mentioned hating Hard Times - I think it's a real stumbling block for potential Dickens readers. People try it first - and schools make people read it early, often - but it's very heavy weather and, to be frank, shit. Conversely, Bleak House is of a daunting size and has a scary title, but it positively zips by in comparison. I think that's the one I like best in terms of the actual writing - my love for Great Expectations has a lot to do with thinking I *was* Pip, for some time...

13:34 / 28.03.03

I thought Hard Times was okay. It's not of the same style of the rollicking London tales, and maybe it's a bit obvious with its themes, which I suppose is what makes it popular with high school teachers, but it's short compared to his other work, and an easy read. I wouldn't call it such a labour to get through.

My limited Dickens experience stretches also to Martin Chuzzlewit, which I found to be a hard slog, with lots of "lookit me! I'm being sarcastic!" It has some good stuff in it, but it's pretty heavy handed, especially when it comes to the American characters.

But Great Expectations, as everyone has already said, was all class. I think I may have read one more, but I can't remember. According to this thread though, it certainly sounds like Bleak House should be my next one to try.

04:18 / 29.03.03

On the "influence on other writers" point:

I'm not a big fan of Dickens, but John Irving is a huuuge Dickens fan. Loves him to bits.

And A Prayer for Owen Meany is a genuinely great book.

08:31 / 04.04.03

Finished Nicholas Nickleby last night - it was lots of fun, and I laughed like a drain for the first two thirds of it. It got a bit less entertaining after the advent of the Cheeryble brothers - I see from the introduction that Aldous Huxley once described them as a couple of 'gruesome old Peter Pans' which seems about right to me. But oh, Mr Mantalini... and awful Mrs Nickelby...

What next, do you think? I'm tempted by Our Mutual Friend - or should I go for another thick, square Victorian novelist? After a hiatus, of course - the new Diana Wynne Jones is out (oh, be still my beating heart).

13:49 / 20.07.05

Having enjoyed David Copperfield and Oliver Twist earlier this year I have continued my exploration of Dickens but I'm stumbling.

I'm two-thirds of the way through Bleak House and to be honest it's a struggle. It has way too much padding and the characterisation is really getting on my tits. In a shorter novel it can be amusing to define a character by amusing verbal tics and laugh at the way they always manage to insert the same pieces of information about themselves (i.e. that doctor chap constantly referring to the two previous husbands of his wife and Mr Vholes contsantly mentioning his father and his three duaghters). But after a while I realised that it's not so much the characters repeating themselves as Dickens repeating himself.

How many fucking times does Mr Skimpole need to give a page-long speech about what a child he is? How many times do we have to hear Turveydrop constantly namedropping the Prince Regent? Instead of moving the book along Dickens takes us on an endless cycle of meeting the same characters over and over and having the same conversations. It's extremely tedious and should not have been extended to 800 pages. Maybe it's a result of Dickens writing it in serial form (did he write all his novels that way? I'm just assuming ...), but he really could have slimmed this volume down a little.

And are Esther and Ada the most slasharific pair in Victorian fiction? How many times has Esther told us about her beautiful darling and how she crept into her room to kiss her while asleep and what a lucky husband Richard will be ...