Resolved: Charles Dickens: Brilliant Novelist or Excruciating Bore???

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 12:48:11 GMT

Dreamed I was sharing a bed with someone, possibly Ben.

My side of the bed had caved in.

So, I threw off all the bedclothes and began reconstructing the bed.

The bedclothes were these elaborate tapestries—rather beautiful but encrusted with filth. And I didn’t have the slightest idea how to go about cleaning them.

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Then I was in a dream restaurant, discussing my child’s school curriculum with a bunch of fellow parents. (I think RTT may have been the child in question.)

My child was starting a new semester of social studies—and parents were being told they had to contribute $165 a month toward the cost of the curriculum. It was a very impressive curriculum with field trips to fabulous places and this kind of… living book (only way to describe it) as a text, but nevertheless, I was miffed that parents had to subsidize public school education.

A sinister group of strangers entered the restaurant and staged this very peculiar scene (obviously a modus operandum of some sort) centering on their outrage at being the poor, disregarded elements of society whose parents would never have been able to afford $165 a month for special social studies.

Then the strangers began systematically and ritualistically murdering the other people in the restaurant.

I managed to escape and was running away from them through some Berkeley template lodged in my brain that involved warrens of strange ethnic restaurants—

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And then I woke up.

To thunderstorms and tornado warnings.

Which has been happening a lot this summer.

Better than 118° heat, I suppose.

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It did not rain yesterday, so I went for a tromp.

It was quite hot and humid when I set forth so that by the time I got back to the casa, I was streaming sweat and looked like I had just stepped out of a shower.

But the tromp was invigorating nonetheless.

I felt a thousand percent better having done it.

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On the tromp I listened to Richard Armitage read David Copperfield.

An Audible freebie! Because who reads Dickens anymore, right? Amazon can afford to turn Dickens into a loss leader.

A recent discussion with my Online Girl Posse—Resolved: Charles Dickens: Brilliant Novelist or Excruciating Bore??? Debate!—made me want to reexperience the book.

Only I’ve read it at least 10 times. Did not want to reread it.

And listening to a book being read aloud really does turn you on to a lot of stuff you miss because the reader always emphasizes things that are different from your own mental underlining process.

In fact, it’s become my standard operating protocol to listen to books I really connect with—Jennifer Egan, Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

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Dickens is just brilliant.

How he is able to infuse his characters’ lives with such dual perceptions of the then and the now:

We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking cigars in a room by themselves. Each of them was lying on at least four chairs, and had a large rough jacket on. In a corner was a heap of coats and boat-cloaks, and a flag, all bundled up together.
They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of manner, when we came in, and said, ‘Halloa, Murdstone! We thought you were dead!’
‘Not yet,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘And who’s this shaver?’ said one of the gentlemen, taking hold of me.
‘That’s Davy,’ returned Mr. Murdstone.
‘Davy who?’ said the gentleman. ‘Jones?’
‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s encumbrance?’ cried the gentleman. ‘The pretty little widow?’
‘Quinion,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘take care, if you please. Somebody’s sharp.’
‘Who is?’ asked the gentleman, laughing. I looked up, quickly; being curious to know.
‘Only Brooks of Sheffield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for, at first, I really thought it was I.

His playfulness with words: It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.

His ability to turn cliches into indescribably complex emotional states: The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.

(Hmmmm… This does look mawkish. Trust me–in context, it’s intensely moving.)

But above all else, his immense impresario-like talents at corralling minor characters. There are something 70 of them in David Copperfield, and each has their own narrative arc, their own… what I suppose you would call theme if David Copperfield were a piece of music instead of a novel.

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Both kinder are at music festivals this weekend and sent me photographs:

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Resolved: Charles Dickens: Brilliant Novelist or Excruciating Bore???