Charles Dickens - Classic Or Dud?

The only thing I remember about Old Curiosity Shop is Quilp flogging the figurehead - haven't ever had the courage to try to parse what's going on there.

Some pretty lol reactions both pro and con per Wiki:

Probably the most widely repeated criticism of Dickens is the remark reputedly made by Oscar Wilde that 'One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter.' (Nell's deathbed is not actually described, however.) Of a similar opinion was the poet Algernon Swinburne, who called Nell "a monster as inhuman as a baby with two heads."[6]

The Irish leader Daniel O'Connell famously burst into tears at the finale, and threw the book out of the window of the train in which he was travelling.[7]

The hype surrounding the conclusion of the series was unprecedented; Dickens fans were reported to have stormed the piers in New York City, shouting to arriving sailors (who might have already read the final chapters in the United Kingdom), "Is Little Nell alive?" In 2007, many newspapers claimed that the excitement at the release of the last instalment of The Old Curiosity Shop was the only historical comparison that could be made to the excitement at the release of the last Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.[8]

The Norwegian author Ingeborg Refling Hagen is said to have buried a copy of the book in her youth, stating that nobody deserved to read about Nell, because nobody would ever understand her pain. She compared herself to Nell, because of her own miserable situation at the time.

The burial was much more moving, I thought, the way they hid the truth from the old man.

Didn't know Dickens was mad.

Here's Dickens personal plans for all 350 million Indians alive at the same time as he was pic.twitter.com/7e9guOFM4s

— Shiv Ramdas Traing To Rite Buk (@nameshiv) February 7, 2023

Love Great Expectations & Christmas Carol, didn’t mind Nicolas Nickleby but otherwise haven’t read a ton. Started Tale of Two Cities for the bookclub i do with my friend, looking forward to…a long bookclub i guess

Was completely baffled by the first chapter
all that mail carriage stuff —but once I got used to the serialization structure (describe describe describe aaaand PLOT; describe describe describe aaaand PLOT; etc) i’m now enjoying it. Definitely settling into the soapy mystery of it all.

Sometimes though i get impatient like
Yep ok it’s a room with a dormer window no yes i know what those look like no I get how they open I can absolutely picture the window perfectly thank you OMG can you please get to the point now (cries)

*bump*

Tale of Two Cities - my final verdict is the last few chapters made the rest of it worthwhile

but he had this thing with using violent out of context French Revolution scenes without ever really ~dealing- with the Revolution except as handwavey bloothirsty “godlessness”
almost pointless having it be the Revolution at all tbh?

and omg the drawn out mystery of the Doctor drove me IN. SANE.

want to read that one again

recently reread David Copperfield, a lovely sentimental book, and now I want to read Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead

DC is a favorite. Just starting OMF and really digging it.

first time in about 10 years that I've not read any Dickens in April. usually April, August and December. the recent bbc thing has made me want to read Expectations again though.

that and Omf and Two Cities probably my favourites

Never sure why OMF begins with a Nick Hornby essay about why OMF is rubbish

two different versions of david copperfield on tv on sunday

daniel radcliffe version on bbc4 at 22:00
recent film on ch4 at midnight

(didn't really rate the book)

recent Iannucci film v.bad. Not seen the Radcliffe, don't remember it at the time

xps context-free handwaving about bloodthirsty godlessness was the standard british interpretation of the revolution afaict (other interpretations could be dangerous)

Charles D's politics were for shit, the OG melt

but i love his work

and tbf Tale of Two Cities is no more about the Revolution than Casablanca is about the war

i liked the iannuchi film. sue me.

heard hornby on Front Row (a while ago) talking about Dickens and Prince. but i think your problem is that you bought the wrong edition (iirc the vintage editions also don't have the footnotes)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001dnbl

my problem is that Nick Hornby is a useless cunt

that LRB takedown of his Dickens/Prince book was pretty funny

I think there should be a moratorium on British TV adaptations of Great Expectations, feels like there's new one every few years.

yeah it's the laziest possible choice

it seemed Hornby's one dimensional autistic boy character became the template for all subsequent British autistic characters for years. To the point where some people might assume autism only affects extremely middle class, charmingly winsome white males. I'm not blaming him for that, but he's still shite!

Never sure why OMF begins with a Nick Hornby essay about why OMF is rubbish

It's the Vintage edition - you can read the intro in the Amazon excerpt

Great Expectations is classic but I agree I don’t need any more adaptations of it.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

but he had this thing with using violent out of context French Revolution scenes without ever really ~dealing- with the Revolution except as handwavey bloothirsty “godlessness”
almost pointless having it be the Revolution at all tbh?

Yeah he was politically a simpleton. Orwell argues in his essay “Charles Dickens” was that his blindness to so many things about the world allowed him certain other insights relating to human personality. His limitations enabled his greatness. This is one of many proto-deconstructive insights Orwell had — his literary criticism weirdly does not fit into the “blunt truth teller” mythos that had grown up around him and which he himself cultivated.

Orwell like Dickens is a victim of a nasty irony, that his biggest boosters nowadays really don't get him and misuse his work

Great Expectations is classic but I agree I don’t need any more adaptations of it.

Established actresses who fancy hamming it up as Miss Havisham seem to need them. This latest one has Olivia Colman (of course) and I think the last one had Gillian Anderson.

the previous (bbc) one was for the 200th anniversary so that'll be >10 years ago now (and, yes, anderson).

The most recent one, with Colman, really nailed the filthy, creepy vibe of the opening chapters

Unfortunately in every other respect it was unwatchable

doing a grimdark Dickens is stupid af

and GE is probably the grimmest, darkest, in some respects

but if you make everything unrelenting then you diminish evil imo

Our Mutual Friend is the best! It just has an infuriating ending, but that's standard with Dickens.

'Now, Mortimer,' says Lady Tippins, rapping the sticks of her closed green fan upon the knuckles of her left hand - which is particularly rich in knuckles, 'I insist upon your telling all that is to be told about the man from Jamaica.'

'Give you my honour I never heard of any man from Jamaica, except the man who was a brother,' replies Mortimer.

'Tobago, then.'

'Nor yet from Tobago.'

'Except,' Eugene strikes in: so unexpectedly that the mature young lady, who has forgotten all about him, with a start takes the epaulette out of his way: 'except our friend who long lived on rice-pudding and isinglass, till at length to his something or other, his physician said something else, and a leg of mutton somehow ended in daygo.'

A reviving impression goes round the table that Eugene is coming out. An unfulfilled impression, for he goes in again.

Reading group in about to finish Book the First of OMF. So far so good.

“Is”even.

Also couldn’t recall why I had remembered that “isinglass” bit;)

i watched Peaky Expectations but, spoilers, it wasn't great

haversham doesn't die, the best bit in the book. there is no steamboat. there are more guns. wemmick lives in hammersmith. it ends with pip marrying biddy and estella dancing with jaggers.

i wonder how much of that was for budgetry reasons?

anyway, it has made me want to read the book and rewatch the david lean version so maybe some good has come of it.

actually, bits of it were ok. it certainly looked good.

In the second half of the second book of OMF. So far so good.

JUst reading about annoying end on OMF. Isn't that book based around an actual court case that did only stop when it ran out of reason to continue because there was nothing left to fight over.

Not clicking to expand that, but have been amusing myself to think of which possible bad ending it could be, especially since one by-now-obvious but still big reveal just happened.

Stevo is thinking of Bleak House anyway

Facebook reminds me it's 12 years since reading omf for the first time and i enjoyed it enough to go on and read everything else by him (with varying levels of success). have Great Expectations reread lined up for august.

Stevo is thinking of Bleak House anyway

as far as I can tell, no-one has done an adaptation of The Pickwick Papers since 1985, which is odd, you'd think getting some comedy actors together to do that would have obvious appeal

Aretha Franklin’s will situation straight out of OMF if not Bleak House.

As promised, end of OMF is OMG.

I can't remember the very end but this bit has stayed with me - excellently done in the bbc adaptation:

Let go!’ said Riderhood. ‘Stop! What are you trying at? You can’t drown Me. Ain’t I told you that the man as has come through drowning can never be drowned? I can’t be drowned.’

‘I can be!’ returned Bradley, in a desperate, clenched voice. ‘I am resolved to be. I’ll hold you living, and I’ll hold you dead. Come down!’

a re-read is in order.

one of the aus women footballers just then was called 'tulkinghorn'...

re-reading Great Expectations and the various adaptations never go beyond the broad strokes of it, often actually padding out the miss haversham / estella bits, but missing the details, like the single shoe, and the castle and the pockets.

Heh, as I just said on the other thread, just friend three interesting posts on Medium about OMF by none other than Adam Roberts, who is apparently writing a book on Dickens.#onethread

That scene ledge mentions seems to be the key to the whole thing, at least to one kind of reader such as myself.

It’s far and away the best part of the ending, at least