Tag Archives: charles dickens

Charles Dickens – The Bicentenary

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Why celebrate two hundred years of Dickens?

Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to George Sand, commented “The author’s life is nothing; it’s the work that matters.”

7th February, 2012, marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens.  I’m with Flaubert on this, and Dickens’ life interests me very little.  I guess it’ll be another twenty years or so before I can justifiably celebrate his writing in the shape of a bicentennial milestone.  This is a date that will probably pass with less fanfare.  The construct seems altogether arbitrary, and the suspicion arises that the mystical pronouncements of the calendar owe a lot of their power to economic opportunism.
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Faulks on Fagin

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In his Faulks on Fiction Faulks picks Fagin as one of his representatives of the character type he designates “villain.” Rightly so. He also observes that it is Fagin who carries Oliver Twist, with which I whole-heartedly concur.

I find it harder to agree with his dogged defence of Dickens in the face of the charges of anti-Semitism which have been, inevitably, levelled against the Victorian writer as a result of his ‘Jewish’ villain. Why did he make Fagin Jewish? Faulks argues that Dickens gives Fagin no characteristics that we would associate with Jewish stereotypes, negative or otherwise. Fagin is not characterised with reference to religious or cultural observance. The label “Jew” is therefore just that, a useful identifier which adds a little colour.
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The Signal-Man – Charles Dickens

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The Signal-Man is a short but superb ghost story, in which any ghastly manifestations must be assessed in terms of a psychological interpretation of the narrative. It is those psychological implications which cause the narrative to assume a shifting and uncertain form.

For instance, are there three characters: signal-man, narrator and spectre? Or two? We see the spectre only through a series of filters, relayed from the signal-man’s perception, to the narrator, and subsequently to the reader.

While the number of players remains uncertain it is difficult to assign the roles of protagonist and antagonist, roles which here may not be immutable.
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Teaser Tuesday – Little Dorrit

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teaser tuesdays

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

What were the chances of that happening? Randomly stumbling across an epithet of Mr F’s Aunt?

Meh! So I cheated. Again.

” ‘There’s milestones on the Dover Road!’

With such moral hostility towards the human race did she discharge this missile, that Clennam was quite at a loss how to defend himself; the rather as he had been already perplexed in his mind by the honour of a visit from this venerable lady, when it was plain she held him in the utmost abhorrence.”

Out of interest, a few (genuinely) random openings of the book reveal that you might find a quote illustrating vividly descriptive scene setting. Or a marvel of characterful dialogue. Or a biting moment of political satire. Or a wonderfully apt metaphor.

Still, Mr F’s Aunt is really quite fabulous and it would be remiss not to celebrate her ‘extreme severity and grim taciturnity.’

Friday Firsts – Little Dorrit

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I’m not expecting to blog much in the next couple of weeks (apart from a long overdue Home post.) My last Dickens of comparable length took some six weeks or so to read! But in the meantime there are a couple of memes which might be made to lend themselves to the book at hand:

The first line can make or break a reader’s interest. Just how well did the author pull you in to the story with their first sentence?

The first line of Little Dorrit reads thus:

“Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun one day.”

Oh dear.  If the first line was make or break time, I fear that Little Dorrit would have found herself unceremoniously reconsigned to the shelf from whence she came.  Fortunately Dickens’ reputation precedes him, and it isn’t necessary to be hooked on the first line, paragraph, or even chapter.

Thankful Thursday

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A Thanksgiving question from Booking Through Thursday:

booking through thursdayIt’s Thanksgiving in the U.S.A. today, so I know at least some of you are going to be as busy with turkey and family as I will be, so this week’s question is a simple one:

What books and authors are you particularly thankful for this year?

That’s quite difficult. When I particularly enjoy books and authors I am usually grateful to the person or persons who brought them to my attention. Being thankful for a book implies something slightly different. I’m thankful for books when they are serving some additional purpose beyond entertainment and /or mental exercise. So we’re talking about the books which serve as a distraction, or place of refuge, at moments of stress; or even those which act as guides through difficult times.
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