Honoring Christmas

A Christmas Carol 

by Charles Dickens

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”  ― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol




The Book of Proverbs includes this admonition: " The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding." (Proverbs 4:7)
By the final page of A Christmas Carol Ebenezer Scrooge has arrived at that place in his life with the help of the ghost of his former partner Marley and several spirits. These spirits take Scrooge on tours of his past to show him where he went wrong, of the present to introduce him to the joy of the holiday season, and of the future to warn him of what may happen unless he changes. Scrooge learns his lesson well and is transformed into a man with a conscience.

You probably know the story that begins on Christmas Eve: When Scrooge terrorizes his clerk, angrily dismisses two gentlemen collecting for the poor and repulses his nephew, Fred, who invites him to Christmas dinner. At home that evening, Scrooge is confronted by the ghost of his dead partner, Jacob Marley, who warns him against purely materialistic pursuits and tells him that he will be visited in the night by three spirits.

The first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, gives Scrooge a series of visions of his childhood and early manhood. Scrooge sees himself as a neglected child at school, then as an apprentice of Mr. Fezziwig, enjoying warm festivities on Christmas Eve, and finally as a prospering entrepreneur whose fiancée breaks their engagement because Scrooge loves money more than he loves her. The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge out onto the streets on Christmas morning to see many happy families and, in particular, the love and warmth of Bob Cratchit’s home. Scrooge is concerned about their crippled child, Tiny Tim, and is informed that Tim will not live to see another Christmas unless circumstances change. Finally, the spirit deposits Scrooge into Fred’s home, where Scrooge sees good friends enjoying one another’s company and is reluctant to depart when the ghost tells him it is time to move on.

The final spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is shrouded in black, with only a hand showing. It first takes Scrooge to the stock exchange, he then witnesses a scene in a junk shop as two women and a man bring in objects plundered from the dead man’s house, even from the death bed, while his body was still there. The spirit then shows Scrooge his stripped bed, with his own body upon it, in his empty house. Upon asking whether anyone will feel emotion at his death, he sees a couple who owe him money; they are relieved and hope that their debt will be transferred to a less relentless creditor. Scrooge has another glimpse of the future: It is the Cratchit home, with Bob Cratchit as a broken man because of the death of Tiny Tim. As Scrooge has one final glimpse of the future—that of his own grave—he pleads with the ghost to assure him that the visions are of what may be, not what will be. It is a new Scrooge who appears to the world upon awakening from this final visit.

Although it was published in 1843, A Christmas Carol remains popular. Although the character of Scrooge is Victorian, his story highlights the importance of being kind, compassionate, and generous to others. These traits are timeless. No matter what era you live in, transforming your character to become a better person is just as important today as it was then. It remains relevant today because readers can identify with its portrayal of Christmas. Being surrounded by family and food, as we see in the Cratchits' celebration of Christmas in Stave Three, is very similar to how the holiday is celebrated today. Very little has changed, making it possible for modern audiences to relate to Dickens' portrayal of Christmas.

Three Nineteenth-Century Favorites

Three giants of nineteenth-century British fiction were published on December 1st: 
Great Expectations (serialization began Dec. 1, 1860), Middlemarch (the first volume published Dec. 1, 1871), and Tess of the d'Urbervilles (serialization began Dec. 1, 1891). They are all among my favorites.

Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

“Now lookee here,” he said, “the question being whether you’re to be let to live. You know what a file is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know what wittles is?”

“Yes, sir.”

After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

“You get me a file.” He tilted me again. “And you get me wittles.” He tilted me again. “You bring ’em both to me.” He tilted me again. “Or I'll have your heart and liver out.”   ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

His name is Pip and this is his story. Starting with the convict in the marsh we are swept away into the world of Pip with all of his friends, acquaintances and antagonists. The story is one of "the universal struggle", we are told, and this will be a motif for Pip's story. The first people Pip introduces are all dead, except his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery. He is in a churchyard and his family, father, mother Georgiana, and "five little brothers" are all buried there. The mood is set early with the sudden appearance of a convict who interrogates and terrorizes Pip. As the first chapter ends Pip is running home, running under a sky that "was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed", with the shadow of a gibbet in the distance.

What a beginning! This is the penultimate (complete) novel from Dicken's pen and it demonstrates all the skills that he had developed over his career. We gradually meet Mrs. Joe and Joe Gargery, Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle; but it is a visit to an old mansion to provide companionship to a young girl that is the one of the first turning points in this story. 

Miss Havisham, the bride who is frozen in time as she slowly ages with yellowing and gray, and the young girl Estella with whom Pip almost immediately is smitten. Poor Pip, so innocent one day and the next, the sad inheritor of the knowledge that he is a poor boy with "rough" hands who does not know the proper way to play and socialize. This realization begins to stir in Pip the yearning to leave this small village and his friend Joe and take up a better life, or what he believes would be a better life. It is not long after that he is provided the opportunity as the lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, presents him with "great expectations" from a mysterious unnamed person.
Work on Great Expectations commenced in late September of 1860 at what proved to be a peak of emotional intensity for its author. Two years before, Dickens had separated from Catherine, his wife of twenty-two years, and several weeks prior to the beginning of this novel, Dickens had burned all his papers and correspondence of the past twenty years at his Gad's Hill estate. This action, in retrospect, can be viewed as a sort of spiritual purge—an attempt to break decisively from the past in order (paradoxically) to fully embrace it, as he does so resonantly in this work.

I participated in a book group discussion of this novel which demonstrated its popularity with all of the attendees showing more passion than typical for the group. Perhaps this is because everyone, myself included , seems to like this story, and in spite of his faults, the protagonist Pip. Perhaps this was because Dickens demonstrated a mastery of his novel-writing craft and, as he demonstrated in Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities, he has restrained the prolixity of his prose and yet not failed to deliver vivid descriptions and dramatic scenes. There are moments as moving as any of Dickens, for example when Joe Gargery says goodbye to Pip in London as he returns to his home and the forge. Joe, who is portrayed as the "natural man", is naturally good as the village blacksmith and somehow his Edenic life is believable. Considered by many critics to be Charles Dickens's most psychologically acute self-portrait, Great Expectations is without a doubt one of Dickens's most fully-realized literary creations.

Middlemarch

by George Eliot

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.”   ― George Eliot, Middlemarch

George Eliot’s Middlemarch began publication on December 1, 1871 — the first volume of eight issued, the other volumes appearing at regular intervals over the following year. Eliot's "Study of Provincial Life" was immediately popular, on both sides of the Atlantic.  It is among my favorite novels ever since I first read it more than thirty years ago.  I have reread it several times since then and my enjoyment has always increased.  I find the intelligence of Eliot shines through on every page, from her heroine, Dorothea Brooke, to the epigraphs for each chapter.  
Dorothea is introduced in Chapter One as a beauty in a plain dress, the dress the product of "well-bred economy," of knowing "frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter," and of her aspirations for some higher perspective:
  
She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractions, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection.



Perhaps my enjoyment of the novel is because, as Virginia Woolf famously commented:  "Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels for grown-up people."  It certainly is that and much more.  It is a "A Study of Provincial Life," pursued by Eliot with a very broad canvas that includes multiple plots with a large cast of characters, and in addition to its distinct though interlocking narratives it pursues a number of underlying themes, including the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism and self-interest, religion and hypocrisy, political reform, and education. The pace is leisurely, the tone is mildly didactic in the best way possible from the perspective of this reader.  Another earlier reader, Emily Dickinson, offered biblical praise as can be seen in the following excerpt from an 1873 letter:
""What do I think of ‘Middlemarch’?" What do I think of glory – except that in a few instances this "mortal has already put on immortality." George Eliot is one. The mysteries of human nature surpass the "mysteries of redemption," for the infinite we only suppose, while we see the finite…."

Tess of the D'Urbervilles 

by Thomas Hardy

“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”  ― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Tess starts out as an emblem of innocence, a pretty country girl who delights in dancing on the village green. Yet the world conspires against her. Her travails begin when her family is in need and decides to seek help from relatives by the name of d’Urberville. They send Tess to ask them for help. Seduced by a duplicitous older man, her virtue is destroyed when she bears his child and her future life is shaped by a continual suffering for crimes that are not her own.

Cast out by a morally hypocritical society, Tess identifies most strongly with the natural world and it is here that Hardy's textual lyricism comes into its own. His heroine's physical attributes are described with organic metaphors - her arm, covered in curds from the milking, is 'as cold and damp ... as a new-gathered mushroom'. At the height of Tess's love affair with the parson's son, Angel Clare, Hardy describes a summer of 'oozing fatness and warm ferments'. When she is separated from him, Tess is depicted digging out swedes in a rain-drenched, colourless field, working until 'the leaden light diminishes'. Tess’ baby symbolizes Tess’ bad circumstances and innocence in the sense since this baby was innocent having done nothing wrong, but it was punished by society for coming from such an evil act. Having been raped, Tess was also innocent of the crime, but she was still punished and pushed aside by society. 

This book deals with the oppression of an innocent girl. Most of the consequences she faced were not consequences of her own actions which makes this story somewhat of a tragedy in that sense giving the book a mood that you can try to make for yourself a good life, but you do not determine your own outcome. 
Hardy uses a lot of imagery and describes the scenery in great detail. While each individual sentence may not be difficult to understand, it is the way the various sentences fit together to form a whole picture which separates him from other authors. His evocative descriptions are underpinned by a gripping story of love, loss and tragedy. According to Hardy's biographer, Claire Tomalin, the book 'glows with the intensity of his imagination'. It is this that remains the key to its lasting power. 

Victorian Novels

The Way We Live Now 
by Anthony Trollope

“Nevertheless a certain class of dishonesty, dishonesty magnificent in its proportions, and climbing into high places, has become at the same time so rampant and so splendid that there seems to be reason for fearing that men and women will be taught to feel that dishonesty, if it can become splendid, will cease to be abominable. If dishonesty can live in a gorgeous palace with pictures on all its walls, and gems in all its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into Parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel. Instigated, I say, by some such reflections as these, I sat down in my new house to write The Way We Live Now. And as I had ventured to take the whip of the satirist into my hand, I went beyond the iniquities of the great speculator who robs everybody, and made an onslaught also on other vices;--on the intrigues of girls who want to get married, on the luxury of young men who prefer to remain single, and on the puffing propensities of authors who desire to cheat the public into buying their volumes.”   ― Anthony Trollope, Autobiography of Anthony Trollope


I have been interested in Victorian novels for most of my reading life. Early in that life, before I knew what a Victorian novel was, I fell in love with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. The other early love of my reading life was for the novels of Charles Dickens that began with a reading of Oliver Twist that so enveloped my imagination that I brought it along in my backpack to Boy Scout Camp in the north woods of Wisconsin. Never mind that there were no merit badges to be had for reading Dickens, or any other nineteenth century author. My life-long infatuation with Bronte and Dickens and my interest in Victorian literature was continued in my teens with the discovery of the novels of Thomas Hardy, especially The Return of the Native. I fell in love with the intelligent Clym Yeobright and his difficult relations with the alluring Eustacia Vye (a love I more recently found that I shared with the fictional Holden Caulfield, perhaps the only thing I shared with him). The sensationalism of Hardy in his novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles,  the education of Pip in Dickens' Great Expectations, and others satisfied my teenage reading desires and furthered me on the road of Victorian literature. It was not until my post-college years that I would come to appreciate the intelligent novels of George Eliot and the later Dickens along with those of Anthony Trollope. It has been during more recent decades that I have included reading and rereading Middlemarch, Bleak House, and the Barsetshire novels in my traversal of Victorian literature.

Most recently I have been reading Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now,  a novel  written late in his career. Unlike his early novels, this was a critique of the England of his age, including a broad-based attack on Victorian class, finance, politics and culture. Set in the 1870s it tells a story of two families struggling to adapt to the changing times. The Carburys are one family with Roger Carbury, the squire of Carbury Manor, leading them both morally and financially. The other family is represented by a young Paul Montague who becomes entwined in the shady financial dealings of a confidence man named Augustus Melmotte. Financial collapse entraps all of the families in some way and provides a sense of realism as the story is based on real-life events. In some ways reminiscent of the later Dickens' social novels, Trollope's novel is presented as a more realistic slice of life, foreshadowing the turn toward naturalism near the end of the century. Most of the characters are quite unlikable and there is little incentive to sympathize with them when they are taken in by the vulgar predator Melmotte. While there is humor in The Way We Live Now, it is a sharper and darker humor than that which made Trollope's early novels such a delight to read. However, the novel retains a relevance for our own day when financial scandals are still in the headlines.

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A Personal Favorite

David Copperfield 
by Charles Dickens


“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”   ― Charles Dickens, David Copperfield


This was the first time Dickens made extended use of the first person and he was effective, particularly expressing both the innocence of youth and wonder of the young David while subtly signifying the older David's narrative voice as he looked back on the events. I was impressed with the relationships David develops in his youth, especially his friendship with Steerforth who is portrayed as a charismatic character with a portent of darkness in his demeanor. As a reader I am not as trusting as the narrator. We are also introduced to the Micawbers, with Mr. Micawber's famous dictum on the nature of happiness and misery:  
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”   Mr. Micawber is merely one of the many memorable characters in David's story - what fun he is!

What is the identity of David Copperfield? David, through the first two dozen chapters of the novel, is called by various names: David by his family; Daisy by Steerforth; Trotwood by his Aunt Betsey; Davey by Mr. McCawber; the list goes on and will be continued and expanded. What is interesting is that David assumes these names as his own. He does this not only in the company of the person who names him but, in the case of Trotwood, in the school he attends as well. The question of David's identity is one theme of this novel that I believe deserves further exploration and attention. For the moment I wonder at the connection, if any, with all of these names and the opening paragraph of the book where David meditates about whether he will be the hero of his own life. As for the question - who is the hero of the novel? - that is another major issue. I should also note the importance of the sea and nature, for example when Steerforth was staying in Yarmouth at the Pegotty’s we see him in meditation by the fire, where he expresses his wish that he “had had a judicious father”. . . “to better guide him”. It is moments like this that also provide a deepening of our understanding of Steerforth’s character.

Continuing on his journey, David completes his schooling and with the financial backing of his Aunt Betsey becomes an apprentice "proctor" (a sort of agent). When David was 10 or 11 years old he seemed old for his years, but he has kept much of his child-like innocence and naivete as he enters his late teens and now seems young for his age. His maturation will have to wait for much more experience and a deepening of his thought much later in the novel. He is able to avoid being taken advantage of by his friend Micawber, but he does not avoid Cupid's arrow and he falls in love with Dora Spenlow. This event with other complications provides growing suspense for the reader. In addition, Dickens continues to provide for David's intermittent commentary from the perspective of his older self. This provides the reader with curious suggestions of the action that will ensue in the rest of the novel.

I find Dicken's notion of marriage somewhat strange. David continues to dote on Dora after his marriage and a first year where they discover their inability to maintain there household. Dora , whose complete lack of common sense is irritating (at least to this reader), provokes David with her innumeracy. The situation does provide Dickens with an opportunity for a humorous set-piece when David tries to "form" Dora's mind by reading Shakespeare to her. Needless to say the project flounders on the rock that is located where her mind should be. In a book that is Dickens's best to date (greater novels loom on the horizon) it does disappoint in the use of coincidence and just a bit of melodrama in the saga of L'il Emily who returns to Mr. Peggoty with the help of mysterious Martha. That aside, David does seem to be maturing just in time to become a successful writer just like the author of his story.

As the novel closes David's story ends and his new journey, with Agnes by his side, begins. Dickens deftly brings the novel to a climax, as David narrates the resolution of each of the novels main characters' fates. But I was most impressed by Dickens's use of the theme of nature and how it signals the final true maturation of David. While nature and the sea have been recurring motifs throughout the novel (see above), in the final section we have nature brought home to David as he meditates on his life (following the deaths of Dora and Steerforth). We get the first intimation of this in Chapter LII:
"Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets . . . The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers ; and the towers themselves , overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth."(p. 747)

Then in Chapter LV, Tempest, natures brews a storm leading to the shipwreck and discovery of Steerforth's dead body. But it is three chapters later while David is travelling in Switzerland that he narrates:
"I think some long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast."(p. 821)

I believe David's feeling here which is followed swiftly by a reassuring letter from Agnes, allows him to regain his artistic vigor leading him to write once again after a hiatus. It also signals his final maturation; and the reader delights in his return to England and the ultimate moment when he and Agnes share their long delayed testaments of love for each other.  Thus ends one of Dickens' most famous and my personal favorite of all his delightful novels.

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Two Plays

On the past two weekends I attended productions of two (Very Different) plays.  However, they both shared exceptional acting and production values.  These plays demonstrate the vitality of the medium and small theaters in Chicago and as an avid fan of the theater I truly appreciate that.

Great Expectations

Last night I attended an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations performed by the Strawdog Theatre Company.  The adaptation by Gale Childs Daly was directed by Jason Gerace and performed by six actors with one musical accompaniest.  The best aspect of the production was the ability of all six actors to take up multiple roles and convince the audience, at least this member of the audience who is very familiar with the story of Pip and his "great expectations", to believe in all of the many characters from the novel including, but not limited to, Mrs. Joe Gargery, Joe Gargery, Biddy, Mr. Pumblechook, Mr. Wopsle, Mr. Jaggers, Estella, Miss Havisham, Herbert Pocket, John Wemmick, and last but not least Abel Magwitch who unbeknownst to Pip is his benefactor.  The story was told in small scenes that captured the essence of the story.  One of Dickens great strengths as a novelist was his ability to create memorable characters and the success of these actors bringing them to the stage was a significant part of the success of the production.  If you know the story you will realize why, once the characters are established, this was an energetic, funny, and ultimately very human tale of one young man's moral and social development. 

The Normal Heart 

The previous weekend I attended an equally successful production of an historical drama presented by TimeLine Theatre Company.  It was Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart directed by Nick Bowling.  This is a somber story of the beginning of the health crisis known as the AIDS epidemic focusing on New York City and the founding of the Gay Men's Health Crisis group under the leadership of Kramer and some of his friends.  The play takes this moment in history using characters representing Kramer and some of the others involved in this to make a moral statement  about that moment in history as demonstrated throughout the lives of real people.  Again the production and acting were superb with David Cromer outstanding in the role of Ned Weeks who battles throughout the play with the politicians, bureaucrats, his brother and his friends in an attempt to get some attention paid to the growing health crisis and get some action to discover why suddenly in ever greater numbers gay men (and soon others) were dying, often from rare forms of cancer.  His battles  are told by a series of vignettes that highlight both his personal relations (his lover Felix was exquisitely portrayed by Patrick Andrews) and the political battlefront that was the background for the story.  While this was a more traditionally structured play in some ways it was also very modern in its staging and direction.  The result was another successful evening of theater which my friends and I thoroughly enjoyed.

A Memorable Life

Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens

“Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”  ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

His name is Pip and this is his story. Starting with the convict in the marsh we are swept away into the world of Pip with all of his friends, acquaintances and antagonists. The story is one of "the universal struggle", we are told, and this will be a motif for Pip's story. The first people Pip introduces are all dead, except his sister Mrs. Joe Gargery. He is in a churchyard and his family, father, mother Georgiana, and "five little brothers" are all buried there. The mood is set early with the sudden appearance of a convict who interrogates and terrorizes Pip. As the first chapter ends Pip is running home, running under a sky that "was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed", with the shadow of a gibbet in the distance.

What a beginning! This is the penultimate (complete) novel from Dicken's pen and it demonstrates all the skills that he had developed over his career. We gradually meet Mrs. Joe and Joe Gargery, Mr. Pumblechook and Mr. Wopsle; but it is a visit to an old mansion to provide companionship to a young girl that is the one of the first turning points in this story. Miss Havisham, the bride who is frozen in time as she slowly ages with yellowing and gray, and the young girl Estella with whom Pip almost immediately is smitten. Poor Pip, so innocent one day and the next, the sad inheritor of the knowledge that he is a poor boy with "rough" hands who does not know the proper way to play and socialize. This realization begins to stir in Pip the yearning to leave this small village and his friend Joe and take up a better life, or what he believes would be a better life. It is not long after that he is provided the opportunity as the lawyer, Mr. Jaggers, presents him with "great expectations" from a mysterious unnamed person.
Work on Great Expectations commenced in late September of 1860 at what proved to be a peak of emotional intensity for its author. Two years before, Dickens had separated from Catherine, his wife of twenty-two years, and several weeks prior to the beginning of this novel, Dickens had burned all his papers and correspondence of the past twenty years at his Gad's Hill estate. This action, in retrospect, can be viewed as a sort of spiritual purge—an attempt to break decisively from the past in order (paradoxically) to fully embrace it, as he does so resonantly in this work.

I participated in a book group discussion of this novel which demonstrated the popularity of this novel with all of the attendees participating with more passion than typically shown. Perhaps this is because everyone, myself included , seems to like this story, and in spite of his faults, the protagonist Pip. Perhaps this was because Dickens demonstrated a mastery of his novel-writing craft and, as he demonstrated in Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities, he has restrained the prolixity of his prose and yet not failed to deliver vivid descriptions and dramatic scenes. There are moments as moving as any of Dickens, for example when Joe Gargery says goodbye to Pip in London as he returns to his home and the forge. Joe, who is portrayed as the "natural man", is naturally good as the village blacksmith and somehow his Edenic life is believable. Considered by many critics to be Charles Dickens's most psychologically acute self-portrait, Great Expectations is without a doubt one of Dickens's most fully-realized literary creations.


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Late Thirties in Manhattan

Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

“In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions—we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.”  ― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

A young woman on the way up meets a man who seems to be near the pinnacle for it's his birthright and only her aspiration. Amor Towles scintillating first novel encompasses this simple story arc and much more as it reveals the penultimate year of the thirties as it was for the young and restless in Manhattan. The narrator/heroine is Katey Kontent (with the emphasis on the last syllable) and the characters she meets on her way up include her roommate Eve, a man who appears to be made of patrician blood, Tinker Grey, Tinker's brother Henry and many others in the space of a year. Katey is a bright, attractive and ambitious young woman whose relationships with her insecure roommate and the privileged Adonis they meet in a jazz club begin simply but gain in complexity as both personal tragedies and world events intervene in their lives. Katey is a Brooklyn girl and her boardinghouse mate Eve is a Midwestern beauty. Together they are expert flirts who become an instant, inseparable threesome with mysterious young banker Tinker Grey. With him, they hit all the hot nightspots and consume much alcohol. Katey's life in particular echoes that of one of Dicken's most famous, beloved my many, literary narrators of the previous century--the explicit references to Great Expectations abound. Strong-willed Katey works her way up the career ladder, from secretarial job on Wall Street to publisher’s assistant at Condé Nast, forging friendships with society types and not allowing social niceties to stand in her way. But this is just one facet of her rise among the high rises of a Manhattan that show off its night life from jazz clubs to speak-easies. What impressed this reader was Katey's uncompromising purpose through it all as she searched for her own personal truth.
Even more appealing was Tinker's fascination with nature as found in the writings of Henry David Thoreau. This was emblematic of his own personal turmoil that seemed to be a complex mix of the age old nature versus nurture battle superimposed upon a larger struggle between Nature and Civilization. Implicit in all of this are the echoes of Gatsby. All the characters are beautifully drawn, the dialogue is sharp and Towles manages to avoid unnecessary sentimentality in the period pieces. The denouement of Katey's civilized life along with those of the friends she makes over the course of this one year in the late thirties makes this novel an exceptional one. I consider myself fortunate to have begun my new year of reading with such a thoughtful, literary, and evocative novel.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. Penguin Books, 2011

Journey and Joy of Reading

The Catcher in the Rye 

by J.D. Salinger

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.”  - J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
On this day in 1951 J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye was published. Book dealers regard a signed copy of the first edition as "one of the most elusive of 20th century books." The last signed edition for sale, about fifteen years ago, was inscribed by Salinger to Harold Ross of The New Yorker; the first Salinger story that Ross bought was also the first appearance of Holden Caulfield.
The presence of literature as a natural part of the background and conversation is not surprising in Franny and Zooey, but it is, if not surprising, certainly interesting in the beginning chapters of The Catcher in the Rye. The protagonist (anti-hero), Holden Caulfield, is not an example of a serious student, in fact he is being asked to leave Pencey Prep because he was flunking most of his subjects and was "not applying" himself to his schoolwork. However, he is clearly not unintelligent, but rather just uninterested in the formal academics as practiced at Pencey Prep, or the several previous schools he had successively been asked to leave. In spite of this lack of interest in his schoolwork Holden is a reader. And quite an eclectic reader in spite of his own somewhat contradictory assessment: "I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."(p 18). Obviously, before you are one quarter of the way through the book you are aware that he is not illiterate, and that you often must be attentive to what Holden does rather than what he says, in spite of his fascinating narrative voice. It is this voice that more than anything brings this reader back to the book again and again. But, regarding his reading and choice of authors, he has good taste in literature, at least for a teenager. For I, too was taken with Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native, although I found Clym Yeobright to be just as interesting, if not more, as Eustacia Vye - the heroine who Holden likes enough to want to "call old Thomas Hardy" and have a chat (how interesting that would be). Now, decades after I first read Catcher, and even more since, at about the same age as Holden I fell in love with the novels of Hardy, I find it fascinating that reading is an important aspect of the characters of J. D. Salinger, both when they are budding intellectuals and when they are merely fascinating "illiterates" on a journey of discovery.  Salinger has company in this regard as I remember that other literary favorites of mine, including David Copperfield and Philip Carey (Of Human Bondage), were also readers in their youth, escaping into literature to ease the pain of their fictional 'real' world.  Whether for discovery or escape, the journey and joy of reading is worth embracing for yourself.


The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. Little, Brown & Co. 1951

A Girl and Her Grandfather

The Old Curiosity Shop 

by Charles Dickens

I had it always in my fancy to surround the lonely figure of the child with grotesque and wild, but not impossible companions, and to gather about her innocent face and pure intentions, associates as strange and uncongenial as the grim objects that are about her bed when her history is first foreshadowed.(From the author's introduction)


Following the publication of Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens started a new publication called Master Humphrey's Clock that was to be a miscellany of selections by various writers including Dickens himself. One of the first short pieces was The Old Curiosity Shop, a Tale of Master Humphrey, but when the public demanded another novel Dickens expanded his concept for this story into his next novel.


The Old Curiosity Shop is the story of a young girl, Nell and her Grandfather. Nell is one of Dickens young girls who are beautiful and, in this case, possesses a certain strength. Her Grandfather is addicted to gambling and seems to need the care of Nell more than she needs his care. Her innocence holds some appeal but I have found her appeal is limited and insufficient to hold my interest. Early in the story Nell and her Grandfather leave London due to his indebtedness to an evil dwarf named Daniel Quilp. If this brief outline suggests the melodramatic it is not far from it. The interest of the reader is maintained primarily through Dickens ability to create fascinating evil characters in Quilp and Nell's brother Fred. Quilp seems to be almost satanic in the way his character and physical appearance are described when he is introduced in chapters three and four. Later he is described as engaging in a "demon dance" (p. 170) and when he tells Mrs. Nubbles that he "doesn't eat babies" neither she nor you as the reader are sure that he is telling the truth, although he may prefer to just torment characters rather than actually eat them.


Dickens is effective in creating a mood and establishing contrasting themes of dark and light, night and day, old and young, city and country, big and small and cleanliness and filth; fundamentally depicting a battle between good and evil. Rather than creating another novel that indites social evils like Oliver Twist or Nicholas, Dickens uses biblical allusions and references to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to establish the story of Nell and her Grandfather as, at least partly, an allegorical tale. Over the next two weeks I will find out what fate holds for this duo and where their peregrinations through the countryside lead them.


Dickens finished writing The Old Curiosity Shop at 4 a.m. on January 17, 1841. The story had been in serialization for ten months, and Dickens had been in torment over the planned ending, unable to bring himself or his characters to face the death of his heroine, the all-sacrificing Little Nell:
"I tremble to approach the place a great deal more than Kit; a great deal more than Mr. Garland; a great deal more than the Single Gentleman....  I am slowly murdering that poor child.  It wrings my heart. Yet it must be."
Having lived with Nell, serially speaking, for so long, his readers must have felt the same dread, and in the preceding months they had written to Dickens by the hundreds to ask that Nell be spared. But the legendary testimonials of anguish — for example, the American readers who anxiously shouted "Is Nell dead?" to the steamer captain delivering the fateful last installment to the New York docks — are matched by the scoffs at Dickensian sentimentality. Most famous of the latter is Oscar Wilde's "One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing." A third category of reader, among them the postmaster of the real village at which the fictitious Nell was supposed to have died, saw an entrepreneurial opportunity. He managed to organize a hoax which was so convincing — details included a faked burial entry in the local church records — that many literary travelers paid to visit Nell's 'grave' in Tong, Shropshire. As in many other tales of this sort, the gullible literary traveler is usually described as an American, arriving with their copies of the book, or china figurines of Nell. The village of Tong still maintains the story of Nell's death, and tends her grave site.




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A Journey and Education

Bildungsroman

“Most of the time it's not the Europeans who belittle us. What happens when we look at them is that we belittle ourselves. When we undertake the pilgrimage, it's not just to escape the tyranny at home but also to reach to the depths of our souls. The day arrives when the guilty must return to save those who could not find the courage to leave.”  ― Orhan Pamuk, Snow
As long as I can remember I have enjoyed reading novels about the growth and journey of young heroes.
Joseph Campbell has documented the mythology of this as the "heroic journey" and it is found as far back as Gilgamesh and Homer's Odyssey. Related to this, A Handbook to Literature defines the "bildungsroman" as "A novel that deals with the development of a young person as he grows up." One of the earliest examples is Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship written at the end of the eighteenth century. This is considered by some to be the paragon of the genre, but this type of novel continued to be popular throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. My personal favorites include both Dicken's David Copperfield and Great Expectations, Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, Thomas Mann's magisterial The Magic Mountain and James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (also described as a Kunstleroman). Each of these novels differs in the depiction of the development and growth of the young person. Dicken's David Copperfield (a very autobiographical example as many of this type of novel are) shows a maturation from the moment of birth to adulthood where he finally settles down with his second wife (pardon me if you have not yet read this wonderful novel). Contrast that with the development of Philip Carey in Maugham's Of Human Bondage where Carey again and again makes unwise decisions, learning slowly if at all, and settling in the end for a life that seems to be good only in contrast to all the mistakes that led him to it. Each of these novels reflects the outlook of the novelist as well as the life of the young protagonist who is at the center of the novel. In Mann's case, young Hans Castorp is just beginning his adult life as we leave him at the end of the novel and, at the risk of spoiling it for those who have not read it, the outlook for him is not good. I will leave you with a quotation from the more positive ending of another novel that ends with the young hero's entry into adulthood, Joyce's A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated consciousness of my race."

Sharing Moments from a Life

Sharing Moments from a Life

We were going out stealing horses. That was what he said, standing at the door to the cabin where I was spending the summer with my father. I was fifteen. It was 1948 and one of the first days of July.

- Out Stealing Horses, p. 17

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

- David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson is a novel as book of memories. It is the story of a life pieced together from moments of action and surprise, meditation and love and one of tragedy. Per Petterson's simple and often poetic prose makes the quotidian events of a life lived in rural Norway as interesting as the most extreme moments of an adventure novel. The adventure here is on a small scale with the outside world intervening at moments, but mostly with a focus on the solitary. Trond, who tells us his story says,

To me it is better to stand alone, but for the moment the blue world gives a consolation I am not sure I want, and do not need, and still I take it. (p. 99)

We meet his family and friends and father and slowly share in the secrets of his life. Told from the perspective of a sixty-seven year old man at the end of the century, the narrative takes in moments from a life that has accumulated meaning and purpose from those very moments. This is a serious and thoughtful story. It is a book that stays with you long after you put it down not in little part due to its resonance with the moments in your own life.

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. Graywolf Press, Saint Paul, MN. 2007.

Victorian Crime

In the midst of reading Dickens and attending a class at the Newberry Library a classmate recommended a "true crime" history book to our class. I have read that book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale and can report that it is an excellent read for those interested in Victorian history, true crime stories or Dickens, at least as he relates to the development of the detective profession.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher presents both the history of an horrific murder in an English Country House in 1860 and the life of Jonathan Whicher, one of the first detectives of Scotland Yard. The details of the crime presage our own era with its JonBenet Ramsey saga. In this instance it centers on the Kent family and their household. Ms. Summerscale does an effective job in presenting the details of the crime, but also focuses on the background of Mr. Whicher in a way that adds to the reader's interest. An additional advantage for this reader were the numerous references to Dickens and his friend Wilkie Collins who popularized the detective novel in Victorian England. The Dickens' character I most closely associate with detective fiction is Inspector Bucket who was introduced in Bleak House in 1853. Dickens interest in true crime continued from his early days as a journalist through his years as England's most popular novelist. This book falls short of the best of Dickens or Collins, but is a great introduction to one corner of the Victorian era, even if it is a grisly one.


The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale. Walker & Company, New York. 2008.

The Old Curiosity Shop

Following the publication of Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens started a new publication called Master Humphrey's Clock that was to be a miscellany of selections by various writers including Dickens himself. One of the first short pieces was The Old Curiosity Shop, a Tale of Master Humphrey, but when the public demanded another novel Dickens expanded his concept for this story into his next novel.
The Old Curiosity Shop is the story of a young girl, Nell and her Grandfather. Nell is one of Dickens young girls who are beautiful and, in this case, possesses a certain strength. Her Grandfather is addicted to gambling and seems to need the care of Nell more than she needs his care. Her innocence holds some appeal but I have found her appeal is limited and insufficient to hold my interest. Early in the story Nell and her Grandfather leave London due to his indebtedness to an evil dwarf named Daniel Quilp. If this brief outline suggests the melodramatic it is not far from it. The interest of the reader is maintained primarily through Dickens ability to create fascinating evil characters in Quilp and Nell's brother Fred. Quilp seems to be almost satanic in the way his character and physical appearance are described when he is introduced in chapters three and four. Later he is described as engaging in a "demon dance" (p. 170) and when he tells Mrs. Nubbles that he "doesn't eat babies" neither she nor you as the reader are sure that he is telling the truth, although he may prefer to just torment characters rather than actually eat them.

Dickens is effective in creating a mood and establishing contrasting themes of dark and light, night and day, old and young, city and country, big and small and cleanliness and filth; fundamentally depicting a battle between good and evil. Rather than creating another novel that indites social evils like Oliver Twist or Nicholas, Dickens uses biblical allusions and references to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress to establish the story of Nell and her Grandfather as, at least partly, an allegorical tale. Over the next two weeks I will find out what fate holds for this duo and where their peregrinations through the countryside lead them. This was Dickens most popular novel since his original success with Pickwick Papers; I do not share the opinion of those who made it so, but find enough redeeming features to keep me reading.


The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2003 (1841)

Nicholas Nickleby III

Nicholas Nickleby ends well for Nicholas and his sister Kate. Along with their mother they can look forward to a much brighter future than the one that they faced as the novel began. In creating this 'happy' ending Dickens left many of the most eccentric comic characters by the wayside, gone are the Crummles and Miss Knagg along with other minor characters buried amongst the many, many pages of the early sections of the novel.
Whether this is a flaw in the novel (perhaps) or not the last section of the story does move rapidly to tie up loose ends and provide answers to the more intricate mysteries of relations among the characters. For the details of these answers I suggest you read the novel.

In spite of its seeming lack of structure, a claim which is belied by the strong arcs of both Nicholas' education in life and Ralph Nickleby's search for rewards for his greed and miserliness, the novel is Dickens' first success in the genre (his previous three books being journalistic and picaresque treats, but not novels). One theme that is embodied in this novel is expressed by Newman Noggs as Nicholas despairs that the schemes of Ralph and Arthur Gride will defeat him, his family and Madeline Bray (his one true love). Newman responds with what may be considered the main theme of the novel:

'Hope to the last,' said Newman, clapping him on the back. 'Always hope, that's a dear boy. Never leave off hoping, it don't answer. Don't leave a stone unturned. It's always something to know know you've done the most you could. But don't leave off hoping, or it's of no use doing anything. Hope, hope to the last!'

- p. 641, Nicholas Nickleby

As I reader you have hope for the good in Nicholas and Newman and John Browdie with the support of the Cherryble brothers; and, you have hope that the evil of Ralph Nickleby, Gride and Squeers will receive justice. You hope to the last.


Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2003 (1839).

Nicholas Nickleby II

Now that we have completed reading two thirds of Nicholas Nickleby some of Dickens' main themes are emerging. Dickens was passionate about the theater and that passion is quite evident in this novel. Once Nicholas has left the "boys' school" run by the Squeers he soon takes up with a theater troupe. He is successful translating plays from French into English and doing some acting.
This leads me to the theme of illusion and reality which we discussed in our last class. Once you start looking for examples of this you can find it in almost every chapter. In the first scenes of the novel we see Nicholas' family lose their modest wealth when his father's investments are more illusory than real. Nicholas' mother turns to her brother-in-law for help upon the death of her husband only to find any notion of family bonds is also an illusion. Of course the "school" where Nicholas is posted by his uncle Ralph is an utter illusion, much to the detriment of the boys confined therein. As we read further in the novel we find that characters are more likely to not be what they first seem to be; finally, it is somewhat ironic that Nicholas would find himself in a theater troupe learning the profession of creating illusions for a paying audience.

The number of characters seems to be growing geometrically as is typical in most of Dicken's novels, but most of the characters introduced so far are interesting enough to keep the reader's attention. Nicholas' growth and education (this novel is a bildungsroman of sorts) is the most interesting aspect of the novel for this reader. But I wonder what it would be like to have the story told from the point of view of his sister Kate?
Two last comments on the novel so far: 1) The city of London is very much a character in the novel with Dickens sharing his love for this city more than once probably drawing on the experiences he had on the long walks that he often took (cf. pp. 390 & 446, and 2) the narrator includes brief comments on the state of novel-writing itself (p. 345). The chapters comprising the final third of this novel will share with us of the fate of Nicholas and Kate.


Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2003 (1839).

Nicholas Nickleby

My reading of Dickens novels has started once more, this time with Nicholas Nickleby, his third novel. He began writing this simultaneously with the last installments of Oliver Twist just as he had begun Oliver while he was still writing Pickwick Papers. Dickens was full of energy and at all of twenty four years of age it is not surprising that he could handle the novel-writing along with some editing duties and forays into the theater that he loved to do.

In Nicholas Nickleby we find Dickens consolidating his approach in the two previous novels, returning to some of the humor found in Pickwick while continuing the social criticism begun in Oliver Twist.
The focus is on the boys' boarding schools in Yorkshire which were notorious for their poor conditions. Early in 1838 Dickens visited the schools in Yorkshire accompanied by his illustrator Hablot Browne and Dickens used some of his experiences in his novel. With Nicholas Nickleby we also see Dickens first attempt using a young man as his protagonist and incorporating the bildungsroman style into the novel along with the picaresque approach that was so effective in Pickwick Papers. The novel begins with Nicholas and his sister Kate and their mother destitute upon the death of their father. Turning to their uncle, Ralph Nickleby, they find a man comparable to Dicken's later creation, Scrooge (although a fellow member of our class at the Newberry Library suggested he more correctly corresponded to Marley, for as far as we know he will not be reformed). Here is a sample of the meeting with Ralph:

'Oh,' growled Ralph, with an ill-favoured frown, 'you are Nicholas, I
suppose?'

'That is my name, sir,' replied the youth.

'Put my hat down,' said Ralph, imperiously. 'Well, ma'am, how do you do?
You must bear up against sorrow, ma'am; I always do.'

'Mine was no common loss!' said Mrs Nickleby, applying her handkerchief
to her eyes.

'It was no Uncommon loss, ma'am,' returned Ralph, as he coolly
unbuttoned his spencer. 'Husbands die every day, ma'am, and wives too.'

'And brothers also, sir,' said Nicholas, with a glance of indignation.

'Yes, sir, and puppies, and pug-dogs likewise,' replied his uncle,
taking a chair. 'You didn't mention in your letter what my brother's
complaint was, ma'am.'

'The doctors could attribute it to no particular disease,' said Mrs
Nickleby; shedding tears. 'We have too much reason to fear that he died
of a broken heart.'

'Pooh!' said Ralph, 'there's no such thing. I can understand a man's
dying of a broken neck, or suffering from a broken arm, or a broken
head, or a broken leg, or a broken nose; but a broken heart!--nonsense,
it's the cant of the day. If a man can't pay his debts, he dies of a
broken heart, and his widow's a martyr.'

'Some people, I believe, have no hearts to break,' observed Nicholas,
quietly.

'How old is this boy, for God's sake?' inquired Ralph, wheeling back his
chair, and surveying his nephew from head to foot with intense scorn.

'Nicholas is very nearly nineteen,' replied the widow.

'Nineteen, eh!' said Ralph; 'and what do you mean to do for your bread,
sir?'

'Not to live upon my mother,' replied Nicholas, his heart swelling as he
spoke.

'You'd have little enough to live upon, if you did,' retorted the uncle,
eyeing him contemptuously.

'Whatever it be,' said Nicholas, flushed with anger, 'I shall not look
to you to make it more.'

(Chapter 3, pp. 36-37)

I look forward to the experiences of Nicholas at Mr. Wackford Squeer's Academy, Dotheboys Hall where he will be assisting Mr. Squeers. His education will be immediate and jolting to his refined character. Likewise his sister will find changes as she takes a position with a dress-maker. The story begins.


Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics. 2003 (1839).

Dickens and Death

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

After he became established as a novelist Charles Dickens would regularly give readings from his works for audiences throughout Great Britain. These were very popular and lucrative for the author. While the readings from A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol were popular, according to the discussion in our Newberry Library class, reading Dickens" Oliver Twist, that just ended, the most popular reading from Dickens' works was the scene describing the death of Nancy in Oliver Twist. This suggested to me the idea of noting some of the more interesting deaths portrayed by Dickens over the course of his fourteen novels and commenting upon some of them.
While he started as a comic novelist with Pickwick Papers, Dickens soon began to portray darker themes in his subsequent works beginning with Oliver Twist. In the third and final section of the novel, after Nancy meets with Rose Maylie and is overheard by Noah Claypole, who reports to Fagin, she is set upon by an enraged Bill Sikes who has been incited by Fagin to act. The scene is short and drawn with uncharacteristic brevity of words by the author. After Sikes hits her twice with the butt-end of his pistol the scene ends thus:

She staggered and fell, nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a deep gash in her forehead, but raising herself with difficulty on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handkerchief - Rose Maylie's own - and holding it up in her folded hands as high towards heaven as her feeble strength would let her, breathed one prayer for mercy to her Maker.
It was a ghastly figure to look upon. The murderer staggering backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized a heavy club and struck her down.(pp. 396-7)
It is the rage of Sikes that strikes the reader while the abbreviated scene emphasizes the power that this rage. Dickens describes the scene as draped in dark just before dawn, and contrasts the dark with the light of the sun as the next chapter begins (p. 397). There would be other deaths before the end of the book, with both the incarceration and hanging of Fagin and the flight of Sikes, which has his end on the rooftops of a particularly unsavory section of London hanging by his own rope as he falls from the rooftop in a dramatic ending to his brutal career.

One other death, however, had occurred at the very beginning of the novel. Dickens starts his story with the scene in which Oliver becomes an orphan, for he is born to an unwed mother who rather suddenly and unexpectedly dies following giving birth to Oliver. Just after the birth the doctor says to her, "Oh, you must not talk about dying, yet."(p. 4); but just three paragraphs later the young mother kisses the baby and, "gazed wildly around, shuddered, fell back - and died."(p. 5) Perhaps this seems too sudden, but it introduces the mystery of Oliver's parentage (who was the father?) and makes for an engaging opening to the story of the young boy's life.

So what can we make of these deaths, and those to come in later novels? Are they merely part of the realism that Dickens was trying to chronicle in his story-telling, or are there deeper meanings to be found? In the story of Oliver Twist one might intuit a bit of retribution in the deaths of Fagin and Sikes; but, why did Nancy, basically a good person, have to die? I will have to think about these questions as I compare these deaths to some of the others in a future post. In the meantime I'm looking forward to rereading Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop next month, and hoping that they will be less dark than the story told in Oliver Twist.


Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2002 (1837)

Oliver Twist

"'There are a good many books, are there not my boy?' said Mr. Brownlow"
"'A great number, sir,' replied Oliver; 'I never saw so many.'"

(p. 107)

I have returned to Dickens after a brief hiatus and find myself immersed in Oliver Twist, his second novel, but his first novel in the modern sense, since Pickwick Papers was more a group of picaresque adventures and related short tales than a novel. Once again there are famous characters, perhaps as familiar to people as any outside of A Christmas Carol; thus Mr. Bumble, the Beadle, the 'Artful Dodger', Fagin, Bill Sykes and Nancy as well as Oliver himself seem to be almost real historical figures rather than characters from a Victorian novel. Dickens style is still fairly simple, he has not matured as a novelist, and the book strikes this reader, who first read it as a teenager, to be a novel written for teens rather than adults. However if you read between the lines and meditate on the nature of some of the relationships you can find the 'adult' novel that is there as well. Interestingly, Dickens has the narrator speak directly to the reader from time to time, at one point claiming "I am his biographer," when commenting on Oliver's entrance into the Sowerberry undertaking establishment, and his unfortunate experience of Noah Claypole's "ill treatment" of him.

The novel is divided into three books and the first one introduces Oliver, the young innocent recalcitrant orphan who deigns to ask for "more" and thus finds the catalyst for his adventures into the world beyond the workhouse. From living with undertakers, and sleeping in a coffin, to discovering the world of the upper middle class and books with the Brownlows he is buffeted about, yet seems fated to find his home in the world of orphan boys under the leadership of Fagin. The first book ends with a bit of a cliff-hanger in the episode with Oliver abetting Syke's burglary escapade. But we all know that is not the end. . .


Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2003 (1837)

Dickens and Opium

In an Opium Den

In 1830 Hector Berlioz conceived his Symphonie Fantastique as an autobiographical tale which according to the composer's own detailed program was composed to describe the tortured dreams of a sensitive artist in lovesick despair who takes an overdose of opium and becomes haunted by visions of an unattainable woman.
In the penultimate movement of this epitome of Romanticism he depicts the musical equivalent of opium hallucinations ('Marche aux supplice'). This music referred to the pleasures of opium, production of which had been growing since the eighteenth century development of the opium trade by the British East India Company.
Even before Berlioz, in 1821 Thomas de Quincey published the first edition of his now famous Confessions of an English Opium Eater chronicling his experiences with the drug. These included his dreams and the original manuscript was written in haste at one might say a 'fever pitch'. The final section, "The Pains of Opium", recounts the extreme of the author's opium experience (up to that time), with insomnia, nightmares, frightening visions, and difficult physical symptoms. Thomas de Quincey revised his 'Confessions' for a new edition in 1856 and it is this edition that we enjoy today.

All this is in preface to a brief discussion of Charles Dickens and opium. Dickens' biographer Peter Ackroyd notes a slight connection between de Quincey and Dickens' family during their move early in Charles' life to the city (Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, p. 19). It does not seem to be a stretch to imagine that the mature Dickens was aware of, if not familiar with, de Quincey's work. It with this in mind that we turn to the opening scene of The Mystery of Edwin Drood which is set in an opium den. It is the aura of this den and the degenerates within that create the first hint of mysteriousness that will be with the reader throughout the, unfortunately, uncompleted work. A brief passage follows:
"Shaking from head to foor, the man whose scattered consciousness has thus fantastically pieced itself together, at length rises, supports his trembling frame upon his arms, and looks around. He is in the meanest and closest of small rooms. Through the ragged window-curtain, the light of early day steals in from a miserable court."(p. 7)

The man is John Jasper who, in a Jekyll and Hyde fashion, will inhabit the book and find the aura of the opium den is not the only part of his aspect that suggests villainy. One mystery in the story is that no proof is ever presented of any overt malediction on his part; therefore we must simply rely on his creepily obsessive behavior enhanced by the aura of the opium den to feed our speculations. At the end of the manuscript we have only journeyed halfway into the story; thus the ends are left loose and destined to lay before us like unanswered questions for eternity.



The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens. Penguin Classics, New York. 2002 (1870)