Charles Dickens

If you noticed me at any time during the last few weeks, skulking through the halls of the New York Public Library, I was probably clutching a plump little volume in one hand, wondering when I’d get another chance to read a few more pages. That copy of Dombey and Son was my loyal companion for a long time. Henry James might have derisively called nineteenth-century novels “loose, baggy monsters,” but I certainly appreciated the scope of this book, the sense of time passing, lives changing, characters intersecting on a vast, 900-page canvas. It made me wonder how much more intense the reading experience would have been, as it was originally conceived, in monthly numbers stretching over a year or so. The closest analogy I could come up with were the glory days of Masterpiece Theatre, before the VCR was even invented, when I just had to be home on Sunday night to catch the next episode of “I, Claudius” or “Jewel in the Crown.”

I have had some trouble with Dickens in the past. My initial enthusiasm in starting one of his books usually peters out after the first few hundred pages. Maybe I just start to long for a female character who does not so totally embody the concept of goodness. But, since I’ve been preparing my public presentation on Charles Dickens, I thought I’d try again and chose one of the few novels I’d never read before, Dombey and Son. To my surprise, it’s one of the most thoroughly enjoyable Dickens novels I can remember. Of course, I’m familiar with the phenomenon of talking myself into feeling the way I think I should be feeling, but in this case there are many substantive reasons for my enjoyment—one of which might just be that I came to it at the right moment in my life.  read more »

I have mixed feelings about Charles Dickens. This is probably an embarrassing admission from someone who’s preparing a public presentation on the works of Dickens for the fall and winter, but the fact remains. I’ve read most of the major novels, some more than once, and while I always start them with lots of gusto and enthusiasm, I’m never sorry to see them end. Many years ago, in an over-flowing of Dickensian high spirits, I bought a set of the Oxford Illustrated Dickens from Scribner’s bookstore on Fifth Avenue (I know I date myself). It was a snowy afternoon and, since the carton was too heavy to carry back to the Upper West Side, my wife and I got a cab and hurried home to unpack our treasure. Handling the books and trying to arrange them on the shelf (alphabetically? chronologically? according to the colors of the dust jackets?) was exciting—a case of book-lust gratified--but the actual reading proved to be anti-climactic. When it comes to novels, what accounts for this transition from appreciation to dutifulness? I never feel that way about Jane Austen.

So what prompted me, you might ask, to choose Dickens as a subject?  read more »