Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Oscar Wilde: "One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears...of laughter."

I am beginning to suspect that I was acting precipitately in my evaluation of my DJ internet work. I say this for two reasons: first, I like using the word precipitately in a sentence, and second, while no one has actually come out and said so, my exclusion from the scene may have been due to oversight rather than deliberate inaction. I’ve been a little lost, not spending every waking minute surfing the interwebs to find maybe 4 good articles a day. It seemed like a worthy endeavor, in its way, the sort of thing the DJ ought to be doing, given the brand and all. Oh, well. Nowadays most people think I’m a teacher anyhow (outside of the DJ, that is; inside the DJ they think I read every book every written), so what difference does any of this make to the VCA? Aside from giving me more time to post here, that is.

Meanwhile, today is the birthday of Charles Dickens. My first experience of the man was in sixth grade. I only recently replaced the little paperback I had of Oliver Twist, which I read hidden behind my textbooks while the class did whatever it was doing that was, truth to tell, dull as ditch water and couldn’t hold a candle to Bill Sikes or Dodger. From there it was on to Copperfield, and that was the end of me. For some reason or other, Dickens wasn’t really taught much when I was in high school, but I do remember that we were greatly expected to read GE, which ultimately provided me the name of the late lamented Pip the Wondercat (we had great expectations for him when we acquired him, as compared to acquiring him to be a cabin boy, if you happen to recall the character in Moby-Dick before the one in GE). While I enjoyed GE, DC remained my favorite until after college (where the only Dickens I encountered, without having the time to actually read it, was Hard Times), when I decided to read Bleak House for the simply reason that I couldn’t imagine a book with a more forbidding title. It became one of my desert island books, unsurprisingly for those who know it, and then I decided it was high time to read all of Dickens from start to finish, which I did, in order, except for Hard Times and Barnaby Rudge, the former because my avoiding it in college started a lifelong avoidance that to this day I have been unable to overcome, and the latter because I couldn’t find a copy in my local bookstore the day it came up next, so I simply went on the to subsequent book in the oeuvre. (I caught up with it later; meanwhile, HT is on my iPhone, if I ever get the urge.)

Sum total of wisdom derived from all this Dickensian reading?
1. Best characters, and best character names ever. (Murdstone? Never topped by anyone.)
2. DC, BH and Our Mutual Friend best novels, the latter two by virtue of objective novel stuff and the former by virtue of CD’s personal investment.
3. It is absolutely better to read these books because you want to, not because you have to. Mark this well, oh high school student, and go back to them in ten years when you have the time to enjoy them. You will. Trust me, you will. The books are filled with humor, for one thing. Great writing for the most part (although, sure, there are a few dry spells, but after a chapter or so it’ll get great again).
4. Perfect memorability of many, many scenes, and many, many lines. “And it was my mother, cold and dead.” “Annual income twenty pounds…” “It is a far far better thing I do…” “She had brought me up by hand.” Et cetera, et cetera.

Having this conversation with high school students is like addressing penguins on the mechanics of hummingbirds. They just don’t get it. Oh, well. I, for one, will celebrate on this day, thanking the heavens for giving us Mr. Dickens, and thanking Mr. Dickens for giving us Scrooge, Barkis, little Em’ly, Quilp, Sam Weller, Pecksniff, Wackford Squeers, the Vaneerings, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce…

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