CHARLES DICKENS, who I like to call my man Chuck D, truly was the man. "The master of the novel in English" is a legitimate catch phrase to use when you're talking about Chuck. Although his style of writing would never fly today (he'd get shredded by agents and publishers in trying to sell his voluminous manuscripts in our time), his epic stories are the ultimate standard to measure any novel of some heft against, and if there are better novels out there that combine social commentary, satire, characterization and plotting, I haven't come across them. Dickens novels have it all. It takes a while to appreciate how truly brilliant they are, just as it takes a serious time commitment to read even one of them, but what I have found since around 2000 when I re-discovered Dickens is that one's efforts are substantially rewarded when they commit that time. Ok, so about a hundred million other literature fans already knew this, but hey: it takes me a while to come to the table sometimes.
I could get an entire blog going on Dickens alone, and I am sure they exist. But this being the time of year when I am completing my annual Dickensfest (I make sure to read one Dickens novel per year, usually in the late summer or fall - I started late for the 2005 version, and it skipped over), I wanted to write down some thoughts about his work and about this year's selection, which as I have already mentioned about eight hundred times on this blog, is Martin Chuzzlewit.
My unimpressive history reading Dickens is nothing to crow about. I haven't always been a fan. I know for a fact I was assigned to read Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities while a freshman in high school. I also know for a fact that I completely blew those assingments off. I couldn't stand a single word of the books and barely tried. I saw a lot of versions of A Christmas Carol, of course, growing up, even watched my sister act in one of them, but I had never read the story. I don't think I actually read a Dickens book before I turned 30 years old.
But by that time, it was dawning on me that I was really dropping the ball, if I was interested in writing novels or stories myself, not to read and appreciate Charles Dickens. I started to reluctantly accept the fact that I would have to slog through at least the high points of his catalogue. Then, when I turned 30, leave it to my man & twin brother Duke Altum to set me straight: he purchased the novel A Tale of Two Cities for my birthday. That was one of two events that permanently got me on board the Dickens train. Shortly after my birthday that year I happened to travel to London for the first time. During the trip, I brought and devoured Tale, which I loved, FAR more than I thought I would. I was already hooked, but then something REALLY exciting went down. I happened to be in London with a friend from work who was into the theater. So he was a Dickens fan too. While we were still in London, he suggested, insisted in fact, that we take advantage of a "Charles Dickens Walking Tour" they offer there, in which a character actor, dressed in Dickens-era clothing, meets you at a particular location, and proceeds to guide the group on a tour throughout various parts of the city, stopping at numerous sites that are featured in Dickens' novels. I remember the guide clearly, an older woman who had an exceptionally good presentation style and an encyclopedic knowledge of Dickens' works. I suppose it was a combination of her skills and the locations themselves that drew me into the world of Dickens' novels forever, but the tour changed my outlook permanently on Charles Dickens. We saw the chancery court featured in Bleak House, a bank from A Tale, various street locations from Oliver Twist, prisons, factories, and a wharf area from Our Mutual Friend, the actual model for The Old Curiosity Shop, among other things, and it totally fascinated me. The London of the Dickens era can still be seen in the buildings, and my mind was filled with images that have stayed with me. After these experiences, there was no more looking back: I was going to read Dickens. I was going to read EVERYTHING.
After that, I went on to read Our Mutual Friend in 2002, Bleak House in 2003, and Dombey and Son in 2004. So far my favorites are probably "A Tale" (shorter Dickens read by his standards) and "Our Mutual Friend" (his last completed novel; NOT short!). Which brings me up to the book I am 3/4 of the way through now, "Chuzzlewit". "Chuzzlewit" is in some ways unlike all of the other Dickens books I know about. It is the only one of his novels partially set in America. It was published immediately following his first visit to the USA in the 1840s, where he was treated like a rock star. But his admiring treatment didn't have a positive effect on his view of our country. "Chuzzlewit" contains numerous overt and exaggerated slams on American society and government. If you are a sensitive patriotic type, to the extent that anti-American slurs written in the 19th century would upset you, stay away from "Martin Chuzzlewit"!!
More on this novel, which is very interesting and worthwhile despite the above, in Part II.
2 comments:
Hey Mutt, good post on your man Heavy D... I must say though that every time Mutt goes off on a tangent about the greatness of Dickens' work and the necessity of reading it, I shrink just a little bit lower... mainly because it makes me realize what a chuzzlewit I am for not having read more of it!!! I've only read three of the novels ("Oliver Twist," "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations"), BUT, two of those "readings" were enforced upon me in high school so they hardly count... I don't remember a dang thing really about either of the latter two listed there. I can remember people licking wine off of the streets and an old lady in a dusty room with a decaying wedding cake. I know now that these scenes evoke images of the French Revolution and of a character named Miss Havisham, but this is only hearsay...
Anyway, when Mutt turns his sights upon Dickens' work and gets a good head of steam up about the merits of reading it, you feel like a penitent sinner at a big tent revivial meeting... you want to stand up and say "YES!!! I'm coming down" and approach the books with enthusiasm and humility... so as I write this I feel like a positive jackass for not having read something like 'Bleak House' or 'Our Mutual Friend'... really though, if you're going to be a student of world literature, you cannot avoid reading Dickens... I think Mutt's claim is right about him being the greatest novelist in the English language. Who else??? His works have not only endured, but thrived, since they were written right up to the present day (look at Roman Polanski's latest film, or the latest offering on 'Masterpiece Theatre').
I have a few Dickens novels on my shelf that cry out for reading... I think the next one I am going to take on is one of his early works, 'Hard Times.' But considering what you've said Mutt about 'Friend,' I think I'd like to take that on one day... as well as 'Bleak House,' just because it is considered among his finest (and my man G. K. Chesterton was a huge admirer of it, which is reason enough for me).
Thanks for another fine post Mutt on a truly matchless writer...
Duke, you shouldn't feel like a 'chuzzlewit' for not having read more Chuck D books, I've only read like 5 myself as I said......and there are plenty. I am no expert. Plus it takes a lot of time, which is why i only get to one a year so far. Although my plan is that even when I exhaust them all I am just going to go right back and re-read; hence, I will be reading Chuck D. for the rest of my life. That's the plan anyway. I think there's little question that Dickens was the supreme novelist in the pure sense of story-telling, which is not to say his books are not flawed. Once could argue that they go on way too long, they have too much grand-standing in them, they pontificate, they are exaggerated, and everything else. I think it's just that Chuck D wrote with such obvious passion and flair, good humor (most of the time), and social consciousness, and the fact that he consistently looked out for the under-represented, the oppressed of society, that makes him a true master. Nobody wrote novels like Charles Dickens', and as much as many writers have tried to copy his example, or honor it even, there will never be another like Chuck D. I am very pumped that I have actually been to the man's grave in Westminster Abbey.....so have you, i think, come to think of it......
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