Dickens

I read A tale of two cities, but I found it so verbose to be incredibly boring. What do you think of Dickens prose? He just seems to describe everything in such minute detail.. Hugo does the same thing sometimes but it doesn't detract from the plot as much as I felt it did with Dickens' writing. Do you find Dickens verbose?

No.
I haven't read that book but I like the way Dickens manage to describe a lot of things in details without ever being boring... I find he's some kind of genius of description because his style is generally rather enjoyable (I did laugh a few times while reading Bleak House).
Just a queston of tastes, I guess.

but then I tend to skim read...

I don't think Dickens is generally verbose and I certainly wouldn't apply that criticism to Tale of Two Cities. In most of Dickens, the charm IS in the details. He is not really a master of plot or characterisation- unless it is a farcical character like Mr. Pickwick, or Pegotty. As Koa said, he is "a genius of description". I had mentioned in another thread that Dickens was the most journalistic of writers and so he has a journalist's eye for details which we can't afford to miss. And in one book at least, Hard Times he has shown that he could write as tightly and compactly as anyone could wish. So it is not a matter of verbosity, Dickens writes that way by choice and it is also a trait you find he has in common with most of the other victorian novelists- Thackeray abounds in detail, butVanity Fairis one of my all time favourite novels, and it would be indescribably poorer without the details and descriptions. The same for most of Dickens in my opinion. Also keep in mind that most of Dickens novels were serialised efore being issued in book form and the details were essential to furnish forth the requisite number of serial episodes.

WHAT AM I DOING HERE!!? I OUGHT TO BE PACKING - IHAVE A HOUSEFULL OF THINGS TO PACK AND NO TIME TO DO IT IN AND HERE I AM TYPING AWAY AT THE FORUM! TALK ABOUT BEING ADDICTED!!! :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

well, i have a stack of homework that literally constitutes a mountain in my room. and i'm here. i'm addicted. it's just that the things he describes are pretty insignificant sometimes. that's tiring, y'know?

I just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities a few weeks ago and I definitely found Dickins too verbose. He would go on and on about details that just weren't very important and then when he got into something more interesting he would change the topic and go on and on. He spent the whole beginning of the book talking about the man who worked for the bank yet he had a relatively small role other than bringing the characters together. For all of his descriptions, I felt that he left out a great deal of information on the characters and their motivations for their later actions.

This book had many of my favorite topics: love, death, revolution, revenge and yet in the end I found that I did not care all that much about the characters.

Like I said in an earlier post, Dickens' forte in characterisation is the comic. He does not come out too well with heroes and heroines, tragic or noble characters, which is perhaps why you didn't find the characters in Two Cities too interesting.

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Originally Posted by dru

I just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities a few weeks ago and I definitely found Dickins too verbose. He would go on and on about details that just weren't very important and then when he got into something more interesting he would change the topic and go on and on. He spent the whole beginning of the book talking about the man who worked for the bank yet he had a relatively small role other than bringing the characters together. For all of his descriptions, I felt that he left out a great deal of information on the characters and their motivations for their later actions.

This book had many of my favorite topics love, death, revolution, revenge and yet in the end I found that I did not care all that much about the characters.

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THANK U. EXACTLY. looks like we have the same taste in books. it'll be good to have someone to back me up in arguments. the plotline was ACTUALLY INTERESTING. the ending was tragic. brilliant. but the prose completely ruined it for me. bored me to death. made me skip whole chapters to reach the end. he'll go on for ages describing something of virutually no relevance. i compare dickens and shakespeare to the pop music of the literature world. everybody has read it at some point or another, but to some extent i can't help but wonder why.

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Originally Posted by fayefaye

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he'll go on for ages describing something of virutually no relevance. i compare dickens and shakespeare to the pop music of the literature world. everybody has read it at some point or another, but to some extent i can't help but wonder why.

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Definitions of relevance? ;) And I suppose some people must like pop music! :D

The plotline was very interesting and if told differently it would have been a great novel. The only other Dickens I have ever read is A Christmas Carol but after reading this I probably will not read any more Dickens for awhile. Although, I must admit this story had a great last line. I just wish a knew more about the character who said it and his struggles.

By the way, wasn't it Dickens that got paid by the word?

By the way, wasn't it Dickens that got paid by the word?

Dru, what's with the double posting? And yes, it was Dickens who got paid by the word.

as far as i know Dickens got paid, even quite well
:D
so he never worried about financial crisis

by this he could write his works with gentle steps.

Just finished A Tale Of Two Cities.

Apparently he wrote it for his newly established weekly All The Year Round and called the sections 'teaspoons'.

Verbose or not the ending is beautifully elegiac.

AND NOT ALL POP MUSIC SUCKS!!!!!