I read somewhere that Demon Copperhead is a parody of David Copperfield. Looks interesting anyway.
Meanwhile I think I'm going to finish Frontier. It has very poetic passages.I suppose there are books one just reads without wanting to understand them.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Sit back and enjoy the ride with Frontiers, eh Danik?
Also **palm slaps forehead **
I did not make the connection between Demon Copperhead and David Copperfield, but it makes sense. Demon grows up in a trashy southern trailer park, but he’s clever. So maybe this book is inspired by David Copperfield rather than a parody of it. At any rate I’ve never read David Copperfield. I’m afraid Dickens falls into the “hasta” category with me. This is not because his novels are metaphorical homework but rather because his books were actual homework for me in school. I was assigned Great Expectations and A Tale Of Two Cities. I enjoyed both of them, but homework is homework, you know.
Uhhhh...
that's a bummer Sancho---dickens is one of my favorite authors and david Copperfield is a great literary notch to have on one's belt.
I finished my Harlan coben book and enjoyed it so much im going to read another easy to read jobbie---the hit by david Baldacci.
Yea, bounty! There was a time when Dickens was my favorite author, I read and reread his novels. If you asked me about any episode or figure I would know, where to place it. And no, these books weren´t homework.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Alright, my friends, you’ve convinced me. As soon as I finish Demon Copperhead I’ll dive into David Copperfield, or maybe The Pickwick Papers. I’ve avoided Dickens for too long. I blame the South Carolina public school system (joking). I forget what we were chatting about about or on what thread, but a Litnet member once posted — Dickens is the Devil. That guy seemed smart and well-read, but also pretentious and insufferable, so I’ll go with you-all’s opinion.
Uhhhh...
Well, let´s Dickens or rather David Copperfiel, speak for himself. Here is the beginning of the first chapter:
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. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/766/...m#link2HCH0001
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
Nice. Also a good hook, which I only say because I do believe I’m hooked. By way of comparison and contrast here’s the first two paragraphs of Demon Copperhead. It’s also a first person narrative:
First, I got myself born. A decent crowd was on hand to watch, and they’ve always given me that much: the worst of the job was up to me, my mother being let’s just say out of it.
On any other day they’d have seen her outside on the deck of her trailer home, good neighbors taking notice, pestering the tit of trouble as they will. All through the dog-breath air of late summer and fall, cast an eye up the mountain and there she’d be, little bleach-blonde smoking her Pall Malls, hanging on that railing like she’s captain of her ship up there and now might be the hour it’s going down. This is an eighteen-year-old girl we’re discussing, all on her own and as pregnant as it gets. The day she failed to show, it fell to Nance Peggot to go bang on the door, barge inside, and find her passed out on the bathroom floor with her junk all over the place and me already coming out. A slick fish-colored hostage picking up grit from the vinyl tile, worming and shoving around because I’m still inside the sack that babies float in, pre-real-life.
Uhhhh...
pickwick papers is by far more comedic. I remember laughing in at least a few places. a lot of david Copperfield isn't that but between the two, especially if demon copperhead is a parody, I think the latter might be the better "notch." either way though, both are realllllllly long. and I think that's a good point with dickens too---he goes slow and creates grand plots, and I think more than anything, succeeding with him requires a fair amount of patience. what might be nice about Copperfield too, if you like the book to movie path, is there have been at least a couple of movies made from the book.
small piece of personal trivia----I posted this somewhere here on another thread some many months ago, agnes (in Copperfield) isn't a major character, but she's nevertheless one of my favorite female literary characters.
Interesting detail, the name "Nance Peggot" evokes two Dickens characters:the compassionate prostitute Nancy, killed by Sikes of Oliver Twist and Clara Peggotty, the housekeeper in the house of David Copperfield, who helps to save David Copperfield, saving him from a family, that rejects him.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
So I finished The Ridgeline by Michael Punke, a historical fiction novel about the Fetterman Massacre in 1866 out west between various bands of Indians and an army cavalry unit. Evidently the known facts of the battle and what led up to it are meticulously recounted in the book. The fiction part of the novel is the dialogue of the main characters and their inner thoughts as imagined by the writer. And that’s the problem with historical fiction. How do you know what those guys were thinking? Punke has clearly done his homework and knows his subject well, but extrapolating that into individual thoughts and intentions seemed forced. And the dialogue was atrocious. He used modern American English. It wasn’t this bad but I kept expecting Crazy Horse to say something like: “Fo’sizzle mah nizzle.” I also found myself wishing I was reading Cormack McCarthy, who had gone to great pains to render the speech of the characters in Blood Meridian authentically.
Speaking of historical fiction, I just picked up Zadie Smith’s The Fraud. I might have to read it next. Hey, it’s not Dickens, but it’s got Dickens as a minor character in it. And Zadie Smith has been compared to Dickens from time to time.
Uhhhh...
a little of what youre describing Sancho reminds me of twain's a Connecticut yankee in king Arthur's court as well as bits and pieces (which is all ive seen) of bill and ted's excellent adventure.
im reading david Baldacci's the hit. its a thriller that starts out with some people being assassinated by a woman named Jessica Reel, who had been, up until the point where she started killing people on her own, a CIA assassin. The CIA has sent the main character, Will Robie, to track her down and kill her but in the last many pages since then, Jessica has saved will's life, and then later, Will saves hers, and although he has the opportunity to kill her, he allows her to escape instead.
it seems there are some baddddddddddddd guys inside the government who are acting on a white paper written by a former analyst and Jessica is actually a good buy trying on her own to prevent them from executing their plan. lots isn't what it seems to be!
Finished Demon Copperhead. Here’s Ms Kingsolver in the acknowledgments at the end of the book:
As mentioned earlier, I haven’t read David Copperfield, but I’ve just dived into it. A couple of chapters in and I’m still sort of tuning in to his style. Dickens rambles on a bit more than Kingsolver, but I like all the asides. I mean, hey, I started this thread so we could ramble on about the books we’re reading, eh? Anyway both books are more about social ills than they are about the story. But concerning the story, one advantage David has over Demon is that he doesn’t have to deal with Perdue Pharma.I’m grateful to Charles Dickens for writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Those problems are still with us. In adapting his novel to my own place and time, working for years with his outrage, inventiveness, and empathy at my elbow, I’ve come to think of him as my genius friend.
Uhhhh...
Congrats for finishing the story, Sancho. Dickens really needs some adjusting he is 19C after all. And most if not all his novels where first published in magazine installments. And the book editors favored the doorstoppers.
But who or what is Perdue Pharma?
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
One word — Oxy.
Ah well, I’ve never been able to leave it at one word. So Perdue Pharma has been one of the great boogeymen of American society of the past couple of decades. They came up with OxyContin, which they promoted as a non-addictive, time-release pain reliever. But it’s really just the synthetic opioid drug oxycodone with a pill coating. And it works like any other opioid. Perdue aggressively marketed it to doctors and aggressively lobbied the Food And Drug Administration for approval. By “aggressively” I mean they lied their asses off. And that’s where the opioid addiction epidemic came from. It’s costing around 70,000 deaths by overdose per year here. Oxy is more popular on the street than heroin. They also make Fentanyl.
I’ve been lucky health wise. I’ve never taken anything stronger than ibuprofen. You see I was raised by a woman with a healthy fear of pharmaceuticals and it rubbed off. My mother was a fiery-tempered, five-foot-nothing, red-haired Irish woman who was fond of saying — you ain’t hurt, walk it off, boy. I could have an arm off and she’d give me a baby aspirin. Anyway — thanks mom.
Uhhhh...
I'm afraid, much of this viralized internationally and not only with opioids. Didn´t the US (former government) sell heaps of useless chlorockine to Brazil(former government) as a magical cure for Covid 19?
As for the opioids, here in downtown Săo Paulo there is the "cracolândia" with tausends of homeless, where any drugs are sold in the open.
Public Administrations have allowed the situation to grow until it became uncontrollable. They merely hunt the people from one place to another in downtown which only makes the situation worse. Shopkeepers become their shops invaded, people who live there are afraid to go out of their homes.
You are right about Perdue Pharma. And your mother was, of course, very much right too!
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
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