Charles Dickens - Classic Or Dud?

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

OMF in the rearview mirror, now onto NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.

WACKFORD SQUEERS!!!!

being possessed of one eye when the general prejudice was towards two

^yes, love that!

Read David Olusoga talking about Dickens giving a friend a copy of The Narrative of Frederick Douglas. He wanted them to read about the experience of slavery which he thought a negative that needed to be dealt with. To ensure sympathy he removed the picture of Douglas attached to the book that was too ugly to leave a good impression. Douglass is one of the best looking guys I've seen both when he was young and powerful looking and older white haired and dignified.
Hadn't realised Dickens was so racist.
Seems to be a widespread thing people thinking abolition was the only moral choice while still viewing those enslaved as not fully human.

NN is by far the most boring Dickens I've read but I am eager to hear your thoughts

having said that I'm not some kind of authority either

The Infant Phenomenon has arrived!

Also, this Alex Jennings audiobook is really a cut above.

I've just been listening to Jennings do Susan Cooper's "Over Sea and Under Stone" and haven't thought much of either the book or the narrator, i'm not sure how to apportion the blame for that.

it's been putting me off wastng an Audible credit on the complete Barchester Chronicles which he reads together with the unimpeachable Anna Massey - but it sounds like he is good with 19th century prose?

That’s a BBC adaptation, but looks good.

He also did the audiobook of Claire Tomalin’s Dickens biography, I just noticed.

Oh hi, found a good batch of Dickens audiobooks that are public domain, for any Bad Boffin miser types that may be out there.

Here

You can also stream from some of the usual suspects.

I'm sure I have mentioned this elsewhere on ILX but I can't find the post currently so I may as well give it another plug here -

depending on
(1) your appetite to spend money on what is undoubtedly a pretty niche streaming service; and
(2) your tolerance for unvarnished straight readings of the classics (usually by the standard crew of minor character actors / RSC types (Anton Lesser, Juliet Stevenson Neville Jason, David Timson, Emma Fielding, Martin Jarvis etc feature heavily) but with occasional appearances from a "star turn": your Derek Jacobis, your Michael Sheens and so on))

...then you may be interested in the Naxos Spoken Word Library subscription service.
https://www.naxosspokenwordlibrary.com/home.asp

rather than paying for each book individually your subscription price gets you access to the catalogue. the catalogue is deep.
https://naxosaudiobooks.com/category/products/

it looks pretty unwieldy and old internet to start with but it's pretty easy to use. they have an app and everything.

there is a an awful lot of Dickens, just to stay broadly on topic.

Ha, thanks, I recognize all of those names.

Just watched David Lean’s Oliver Twist for the first time, maybe I should finally get around to reading the book.