Books you should read, but probably won't

[aubrey]

You say "spineless hypocritical grovelling toady" as if it's something bad.

[sinistral]

Aug 29, 2009 5:05:08 GMT Flatypus said:

an aged Sam Weller relating other self-important worthless snobs he served in his life as a cynical East End Jew (which I assume from the Yiddish V-W inversion) .

Just to clarify a point which perhaps may not be known to those who have little knowledge of Charles Dickens and his works.
The reversing of V and W was a fairly common occurrence in Kentish dialect as of course Dickens knew at first hand,having been partially brought up in the county.

Wery for very or wittals for vittals being examples.

I recommend this site....it has some splendid dialect words.....you can now say wankly with a clear conscience.

www.historic-kent.co.uk/kdialect.html

[Patrick]

Not forgetting Chaucer - who wrote about folk travelling from Blackheath (If I remember it) travelling just the short(ish) distance to Rochester and not being able to understand the dialect - so strong were the local differences in his time.

[everso]

Aug 29, 2009 5:05:08 GMT Flatypus said:

Aug 28, 2009 15:59:13 GMT everso said:

I haven't read A Christmas Tale, so can't comment, but, oh, The Pickwick Papers is a wonderful read! How CAN you not like it? It's such a nice, jolly, funny book. And the Christmas at Dingley Dell chapter is so cosy.

Are you sure you've read it?

I haven't read it. Incessant TV and radio adaptations have put me off wanting anything to do with that silly shower of pompous Hooray Henry idiots. The nearest I ever got was starting to write a series of what happened next memoirs about literary characters when I imagine an aged Sam Weller relating other self-important worthless snobs he served in his life as a cynical East End Jew (which I assume from the Yiddish V-W inversion) .

I did Uriah Heape as well, whom I imagine developing to a millionaire Marxist (made his millions provisioning workers on the Great Western Railway). he is the only character in Dickens I have some respect for. He is loyal to his mother, and unlike the spineless hypocritical grovelling toady Copperfield stands up for their rights against the patronising Establishment that can afford to smile sweetly and flip another halfpenny in his direction. [i[Vive la Revolution!

[/i] (but bleed the buggers dry first )[/quote]

How can you say you don't like a book when you've not read it

Funnily enough, The Pickwick Papers is the one Dickens novel that I don't think translates well to the screen. You really do have to read it. Pickwick, Snodgrass, Tupman and Winkle are definitely NOT hurray henrys no matter how they've been protrayed on screen. They aren't snobs either.

Uriah Heep? However can you have respect for him? Dreadful man.

And how could you possibly write a "what happened next" memoir if you don't actually know what happened in the first place

[aubrey]

I've just seen a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It looks pretty good.

[everso]

Aug 29, 2009 14:21:31 GMT aubrey said:

I've just seen a book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It looks pretty good.

Yes, I heard about that the other day.

I believe it was Jane Austen's last book.

[Flatypus]

Aug 29, 2009 10:47:49 GMT sinistral said:

Just to clarify a point which perhaps may not be known to those who have little knowledge of Charles Dickens and his works.
The reversing of V and W was a fairly common occurrence in Kentish dialect as of course Dickens knew at first hand,having been partially brought up in the county.

Wery for very or wittals for vittals being examples.

I recommend this site....it has some splendid dialect words.....you can now say wankly with a clear conscience.

www.historic-kent.co.uk/kdialect.html

Was it indeed? I've seen that as a London feature there is no known record, although that is inadequate because known records don't go back far enough. The best we can have is maybe some old codger in 1910 talking about old codgers he knew as a boy and Pickwick is I think written in 1837 and probably set several years before.

If he's Kentish, the 'Yiddish wide boy' character makes a lot of sense. They would be very similar, people come from and with very little to make their way in the Big City largely on their wits. I'm not sure what Sam would be today - Nigerian possibly - but you can bet he'd have more than one mobile phone and barely need them because his own grapevine works far better! I can't see him as being a Yuppie jumped-up barrow boy though and I can't see him as shady either. He's made his choice and it isn't the underworld and I think would have far too much sense to think he could stay on the side there without falling under somebody's control. In other words, he's one of the few Dickens characters I like and I suppose that is partly why I don't like Pickwick and his friends. I am sure they treat him very well by standards of the time - but those are not standards of my time. I wonder actually, if he owes something to Tobias Smollet's Humphrey Clinker.

As for Uriah Heap, he is an unlikely choice but I see him as a sort of working-class hero. However good his employer (who, if I remember, is a benevolent drunk) his illegitimacy (I presume) and class exclude him from social equality; no matter how clever and good at his job, he cannot become a gentleman: he's a bastard because he was born a bastard. Copperfield (like most Dickens characters) is a bit too characterless for me and I'm being anachronistic by thinking psychology, but I see him as unknowingly motivated by belief in his own social superiority and his subservience a less honest version of Heap's, in that Heap is conforming to requirements cynically while Copperfield has very similar ambitions but because he knows he is of the class to achieve them, does not even recognise them in himself.

Heap strikes me as very very angry at the social injustice that excludes him, while Copperfield is perfectly happy with it because he knows that ultimately he is a Gentleman Born and that will ultimately show through because he is a naturally superior being. That's why I can imagine Heap both ripping the system off that by nature rips him off while, once he has feathered his nest, doing all he can to demolish it.

Dickens understood and played to conventional prejudices of his time far more than we like to notice and one of them is that Heap has red hair. So does Judas Iscariot. Red hair is Untrustworthy, just like a Quilp stunted in body is stunted in mind, though because he is a child Tiny Tim can be patronised. Oddly, the one case where this is less true is Fagin because although he apologised to Jews if it tarred all Jews with the same brush, his research had shown him that boy gangs were a Jewish specialty of the time. In another way, Fagin is one of the few who do display greater depth of character.

That's why I don't like Dickens ultimately: he is a cartoonist and a melodramatist who wrote popular fortnightly pot-boiler soap opera without the slightest objection to changing the plot, expanding minor characters who proved popular and throwing bizarre episodes in as public response made desirable. He is an action writer, not a psychological one and while I like some rollicking action, I prefer depth of character. Were he to write for anything today other than ITV it would probably be The People's Friend (which I once bizarrely got delivered instead of The Morning Star!). I suppose he wrote for magazine rather than the stage that he loved because it was the new medium Soap of the day and reached a wider audience. He is not in the same category as Trollope or Thackeray or that old misery Hardy!

When you think that at much the same time, in the Russian Autocracy you had Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Turgenyev, Tolstoy writing what are kind of considered the Great European Novels of All Time, you see how superficial Dickens really was.

[aubrey]

Heep! It's Heep!

The trouble with Dickens is that a lot of his more bizarre exaggerations about life in the 19th century have turned out to be true; later research (in things like My Secret Life and Mayhew and other contemporary documents) have backed him up. And there is a lot of stuff that he could only hint at.

[everso]

Aug 31, 2009 8:48:51 GMT aubrey said:

Heep! It's Heep!

The trouble with Dickens is that a lot of his more bizarre exaggerations about life in the 19th century have turned out to be true; later research (in things like My Secret Life and Mayhew and other contemporary documents) have backed him up. And there is a lot of stuff that he could only hint at.

Oh, I'm glad you said that. I was just about to.

[everso]

Aug 31, 2009 0:43:23 GMT Flatypus said:

Aug 29, 2009 10:47:49 GMT sinistral said:

Just to clarify a point which perhaps may not be known to those who have little knowledge of Charles Dickens and his works.
The reversing of V and W was a fairly common occurrence in Kentish dialect as of course Dickens knew at first hand,having been partially brought up in the county.

Wery for very or wittals for vittals being examples.

I recommend this site....it has some splendid dialect words.....you can now say wankly with a clear conscience.

www.historic-kent.co.uk/kdialect.html

Was it indeed? I've seen that as a London feature there is no known record, although that is inadequate because known records don't go back far enough. The best we can have is maybe some old codger in 1910 talking about old codgers he knew as a boy and Pickwick is I think written in 1837 and probably set several years before.

If he's Kentish, the 'Yiddish wide boy' character makes a lot of sense. They would be very similar, people come from and with very little to make their way in the Big City largely on their wits. I'm not sure what Sam would be today - Nigerian possibly - but you can bet he'd have more than one mobile phone and barely need them because his own grapevine works far better! I can't see him as being a Yuppie jumped-up barrow boy though and I can't see him as shady either. He's made his choice and it isn't the underworld and I think would have far too much sense to think he could stay on the side there without falling under somebody's control. In other words, he's one of the few Dickens characters I like and I suppose that is partly why I don't like Pickwick and his friends. I am sure they treat him very well by standards of the time - but those are not standards of my time. I wonder actually, if he owes something to Tobias Smollet's Humphrey Clinker.

As for Uriah Heap, he is an unlikely choice but I see him as a sort of working-class hero. However good his employer (who, if I remember, is a benevolent drunk) his illegitimacy (I presume) and class exclude him from social equality; no matter how clever and good at his job, he cannot become a gentleman: he's a bastard because he was born a bastard. Copperfield (like most Dickens characters) is a bit too characterless for me and I'm being anachronistic by thinking psychology, but I see him as unknowingly motivated by belief in his own social superiority and his subservience a less honest version of Heap's, in that Heap is conforming to requirements cynically while Copperfield has very similar ambitions but because he knows he is of the class to achieve them, does not even recognise them in himself.

Heap strikes me as very very angry at the social injustice that excludes him, while Copperfield is perfectly happy with it because he knows that ultimately he is a Gentleman Born and that will ultimately show through because he is a naturally superior being. That's why I can imagine Heap both ripping the system off that by nature rips him off while, once he has feathered his nest, doing all he can to demolish it.

Dickens understood and played to conventional prejudices of his time far more than we like to notice and one of them is that Heap has red hair. So does Judas Iscariot. Red hair is Untrustworthy, just like a Quilp stunted in body is stunted in mind, though because he is a child Tiny Tim can be patronised. Oddly, the one case where this is less true is Fagin because although he apologised to Jews if it tarred all Jews with the same brush, his research had shown him that boy gangs were a Jewish specialty of the time. In another way, Fagin is one of the few who do display greater depth of character.

That's why I don't like Dickens ultimately: he is a cartoonist and a melodramatist who wrote popular fortnightly pot-boiler soap opera without the slightest objection to changing the plot, expanding minor characters who proved popular and throwing bizarre episodes in as public response made desirable. He is an action writer, not a psychological one and while I like some rollicking action, I prefer depth of character. Were he to write for anything today other than ITV it would probably be The People's Friend (which I once bizarrely got delivered instead of The Morning Star!). I suppose he wrote for magazine rather than the stage that he loved because it was the new medium Soap of the day and reached a wider audience. He is not in the same category as Trollope or Thackeray or that old misery Hardy!

When you think that at much the same time, in the Russian Autocracy you had Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Turgenyev, Tolstoy writing what are kind of considered the Great European Novels of All Time, you see how superficial Dickens really was.

Have you read David Copperfield - or only watched the film?

[Flatypus]

Aug 31, 2009 8:48:51 GMT aubrey said:

Heep! It's Heep!

The trouble with Dickens is that a lot of his more bizarre exaggerations about life in the 19th century have turned out to be true; later research (in things like My Secret Life and Mayhew and other contemporary documents) have backed him up. And there is a lot of stuff that he could only hint at.

True or not, I find it just too alien to care. There is a famous novel from slightly later called Child of the Jago. That is supposed to be based on experience and somehow it rings true and familiar from just the same kind of police no-go area today. I'm sure Dickens must have been on the A level syllabus but I don't remember reading him. I probably did because I remember something about turgid and so decided to avoid those questions. I suppose that in some ways, country and middle class life changes little while the urban poor have far too many subcultures. It's alright for what is expected to be alien to be so. Often, the closer it feels, the more the alienness stands out.

Obviously Dickens wanted to make money but he wanted to publicise social problems too and the kind of grim report that Engels did on the Manchester slums no doubt never reached anything like the same size of audience. In any case, I suppose the urban Victorian lower classes represent the beginning of everything I detest about modern mass-produced (or mess-produced) life so I don't want to know. It's a culture I feel still affects us very strongly that we have to get away from and back to the relative independence of working for one's own little business or farm instead of for a master, but at a much higher standard of living. I just do not like those grubby petty-minded people. At least the French had a go at trying to better themselves even if it never really worked out. If I want to read Dickens, I'll read Zola!

[sinistral]

Aug 31, 2009 8:48:51 GMT aubrey said:

Heep! It's Heep!

The trouble with Dickens is that a lot of his more bizarre exaggerations about life in the 19th century have turned out to be true; later research (in things like My Secret Life and Mayhew and other contemporary documents) have backed him up. And there is a lot of stuff that he could only hint at.

Nice post Aubrey......

[sinistral]

Aug 31, 2009 11:53:55 GMT everso said:

Have you read David Copperfield - or only watched the film?

Neither I would imagine,Everso......

Why bother when you already know everything?

[aubrey]

I also used to know an old bloke who swapped his vs and ws (this was in the 90s)(1990s). He was Irish, but had been in the army for years and then came to London to live with his mother. Then she died and his flat went to buggery. Never had to look after himself before.


(It is OK not to like Dickens, though, or anybody else. I find him a bit hard going myself.)

[sinistral]

Aug 31, 2009 20:29:10 GMT aubrey said:

I also used to know an old bloke who swapped his vs and ws (this was in the 90s)(1990s). He was Irish

Oh come now Aubrey.....pay attention....

He must have been Yiddish not Irish.

[everso]

Aug 31, 2009 20:29:10 GMT aubrey said:

I also used to know an old bloke who swapped his vs and ws (this was in the 90s)(1990s). He was Irish, but had been in the army for years and then came to London to live with his mother. Then she died and his flat went to buggery. Never had to look after himself before.


(It is OK not to like Dickens, though, or anybody else. I find him a bit hard going myself.)

[/color]

It's absolutely o.k. to dislike any author - so long as you've read his books, or, at least, the ones you're critical of. I haven't read every book by Dickens; I've started a couple and given up, but I love Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby. --- and Great Expectations

[Flatypus]

Aug 31, 2009 11:53:55 GMT everso said:

Have you read David Copperfield - or only watched the film?

I don't think I've ever seen any of the films, just enough to recognise opening scenes and switch over, but countless boring radio dramatisations and readings. I might have read it or parts of it. If I remember, Copperfield grew up to be a horrid little snob who did his best to disown the ex-convict responsible for his success. I've certainly read some Dickens because I remember it as such heavy going. Don't recall ever finishing any! At the same time he probably is the author most suited to dramatisation because he's known to have been very into amateur dramatics and music-hall melodrama so he understood how to write stories in a theatrical style that obviously adapts well. I just don't find him particularly interesting. I can say the same about Flaubert's dopy little Emma Bovary too. Trying to read Dickens as well as all the eternal dramatisations put me off reading his contemporaries as well, which having heard some dramatisations, I realise might well have been my loss.

I wish I could remember what I had to read at school. The odd thing is that of the authors I remember liking, I do not remember anything they wrote and ones I hated, I remember all too well! When it comes to a choice between the original and the adaptation, believe me listen and watch Carmen and throw the novella away!

[everso]

Aug 31, 2009 21:50:14 GMT Flatypus said:

Aug 31, 2009 11:53:55 GMT everso said:

Have you read David Copperfield - or only watched the film?

I don't think I've ever seen any of the films, just enough to recognise opening scenes and switch over, but countless boring radio dramatisations and readings. I might have read it or parts of it. If I remember, Copperfield grew up to be a horrid little snob who did his best to disown the ex-convict responsible for his success. I've certainly read some Dickens because I remember it as such heavy going. Don't recall ever finishing any! At the same time he probably is the author most suited to dramatisation because he's known to have been very into amateur dramatics and music-hall melodrama so he understood how to write stories in a theatrical style that obviously adapts well. I just don't find him particularly interesting. I can say the same about Flaubert's dopy little Emma Bovary too. Trying to read Dickens as well as all the eternal dramatisations put me off reading his contemporaries as well, which having heard some dramatisations, I realise might well have been my loss.

I wish I could remember what I had to read at school. The odd thing is that of the authors I remember liking, I do not remember anything they wrote and ones I hated, I remember all too well! When it comes to a choice between the original and the adaptation, believe me listen and watch Carmen and throw the novella away!

No, that's Great Expectations.

It's no good reading 19th century books and getting cross because they didn't behave like people do in the 21st century.

And you're correct, Dickens's novels are suitable for dramatisation - except, IMO, The Pickwick Papers.

[trubble]

I have a book that was my great-grandfather's (would that be correct? yes, I think so) and Dickens was a contemporary author at the time -- this book is called Confessions and it's a Parlour Game where people fill in a sort of questionnaire 'My favourite flower is...' 'My hero is...' etc.

Almost all the entries for favourite author say Dickens.

Wow, he must have been like a breath of fresh air back then, everyone seemed to read him.

[Flatypus]

Aug 31, 2009 22:01:17 GMT everso said:

No, that's Great Expectations.

Is it? They're all equally tedious.

It's no good reading 19th century books and getting cross because they didn't behave like people do in the 21st century.

Who's getting cross? I just find Dickens boring, not all 19th century books. I find Raymond Chandler and Nick Hornby boring too. Even though I can't remember a thing, I known that I enjoyed having to do Balzac at school as much as I loathed Flaubert and Mérimée. I'm happier with the English 18th century than the 19th until Oscar Wilde comes along. Now, I've read everything he wrote and enjoyed all of it. There's a lot of Mark Twain I've enjoyed once I kean git thru th'impentrible fernetic spellin. I just don't like anything I've seen, heard or read connected with Dickens. He is too sentimentalised, too easily turned into the kind of slop that violates Hugo and has never been risked with Zola. Their brutalised working class, I can believe in; Dickens's are always ready to launch into a knees-up about We wuz poor but we wuz 'appy.

I guess that was the only way he could get the message across because he seems to have been genuine rather than trying to portray poverty kitsch. But it's not for me. I prefer Jane Austen, I'd like to know more about Trollope and Thackeray, I know a bit about Hardy but don't see why I should read such misery. All the same, Hardy rings truer than Dickens ever does. I agree with Mark Twain that "Only someone with a heart of stone could read the death of Little Nell without his cheeks running with tears of laughter". Dickens is a kind of self-travesty of all that was sickly, sentimental and thought that because it felt pity absolved it from doing anything about the Victorian age, and about ours too.

Come to think of it, that's a very good description of our age too - "Isn't it terrible how these people have to live?" "Yes, utterly terrible" "They must be so glad to know that we realise their life is so terrible".

And you're correct, Dickens's novels are suitable for dramatisation - except, IMO, The Pickwick Papers.

Possibly also 'Tale of two cities', which is the only one I think I might like to read because it is the only one with people I can find remotely interesting and even then more on the Republican side than one waster giving his life for another to continue to treat everybody else like scum, and as far as I'm concerned the only true novel that he wrote that was not compiled magazine serial episodes. I don't get the thing about Dickens. His novels do not address real human dilemma in the way the Russians of the day did and they cosy up over all the social abuses and make them palatable as the French never did. I guess his siding with the French aristocracy shows why I dislike his written version of modern slum tourism.

Why should an anti-preference for one author matter so much? There were many more before and since and at the time. Dickens is just some tabloid hack, the JP Donleavy or Nick Hornby of his time. There were others far more worth reading before, during and after. On the whole, the 19th century was bad news for English literature just as it was good news for French and Russian. England shone in the 18th and 17th and of course 16th with Shakespeare, centuries when France and Russia weere stuck in pseudo-Latin verse. Give me Austen, Smollett, Defoe, Sterne, Sheridan, Pope, Donne etc etc any time over that maudlin magazinist!