Bleak House had quite a good TV adaptation. The characters are supposed to be comic observations for god's sake not searing psychological examinations.
Bleak House had quite a good TV adaptation. The characters are supposed to be comic observations for god's sake not searing psychological examinations.
Ooh, what a good idea, where's my pen........?Originally Posted by Neely
It will be a smash, and then I could follow it up with something like "Tess, the Musical", and we could get Andrew Lloyd Webber to produce it and market the search for a Tess on Saturday evening primetime tv, but the warbling wannabees might come unstuck if they have to audition on a gallows while trying to sing with a rope round their neck......
A Christmas Carol is his most readable book.
I would say I'm a fan, but even I gave up on Martin Chuzzlewit.
I've always thought Zadie was hot! I hope she soon recovers from the sucess of her first book.
Ooh, what a good idea, where's my pen........?
It will be a smash, and then I could follow it up with something like "Tess, the Musical", and we could get Andrew Lloyd Webber to produce it and market the search for a Tess on Saturday evening primetime tv, but the warbling wannabees might come unstuck if they have to audition on a gallows while trying to sing with a rope round their neck......Ahhhh, don't even joke about stealing my idea...
No, I don't think I'd go with the Tess and certainly not with that horrible man Webber and his teenie shows - no, I would be a one hit success and then move on to other things.
I think that Mr Squat-thrust would make a good character in a Dickens novel, Mr Squat-thrust, Mr Squat-thrust, you can really get your teeth into it...
I am a supporter of the Hey Jude-thing.
And I support Neely's Webber-thing as well. Absolute cr*p. Oh, my God, how can people like that gibberish. It just sounds all so... the same.
So lt's phone Paul and do some writing
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I hadn't read Dicken's since high school (40 years ago) and only remembered hating "A Tale of Two Cities". The recent BBC adaptation of "Bleak House" piqued my interest and have now read half a dozen of his novels.
One approach I took as a lark was to read David Copperfield as a serial. My edition clearly marked where the "numbers' (published groups of chapters) stopped and started and I purposely waited at least a week between them. I think this greatly enhanced my appreciation of how he was working with the publishing media of his time. When descibing Dicken's to my non-reading friends I relate him to a one-man production company of a hit TV series - actually many overlapping hit TV series. He is writing as he goes along and interacting with his public as he does so. From what I've read he was very aware of public reaction to his stories and molded the plots accordingly.
Try one of the BBC adaptations (Bleak House and Little Dorrit are my favorites) and then pick up the book. His characters are amazing!
That said....
I read only for pleasure and do not consider myself a scholar so please keep that in mind when reading my comments.
Pete in Portland
Heavens no! The film adaptations of Dickens novels are almost all deplorable dross. Even if the film makers could manage to be reasonably faithful to the stories or to the most essential qualities of the characters - or indeed to include all of at least the major characters - which they apparently can't, film or stage could never capture the humour and biting social commentary of Dickens's written words. One exception as to the former point (there are none as to the latter) is the 1994 miniseries production of Martin Chuzzlewit, with Tom Wilkinson as an incredible Seth Pecksniff. Truly Excellent! Don't even try to watch any of the David Copperfield adaptations. Miserable, every one of them.
Read the damn books. Hang in there. It's worth it. The middle can get slow. So what? What else have you got to do that's so important? Take it slow. Savour it!!! It's beautiful writing! Don't expect to read more than about 10 pages an hour, or 20 a day. His original readers had a month to digest 32 pages, 19 months to read most of his long novels. It took me about four months to read Bleak House. It was absolutely worth it. You might be able to get through Hard Times in a week or so, but I wouldn't recommend starting with it. It is the least memorable of his novels (of the 10 I've read - still have a few to go).
I'd start with Our Mutual Friend, and just don't quit. The pay off in that one is huge. Trust me.
But if you just don't like it, and prefer more direct, simplistic, language, then don't read Dickens. Try Douglas Adams. Not that his writing is simplistic or very direct. It isn't. You've probably read at least some of his work. Did you like The Hitchhiker's Guide books? I loved them. Douglas Adams (Happy Towel Day, BTW), and Kurt Vonnegut were the only authors I really loved before I started reading Dickens. Adams, you might have noticed, also has a farily complex, highly descriptive writing style. A couple years ago I was reading The Salmon of Doubt (Adamses essays and notes published after his death), and somewhere in there are listed his favourite authors, which include Kurt Vonnegut ('hey', I thought, 'mine too!'), and Charles Dickens, who I'd never read, and knew of him only that he'd written A Christmas Carol and A Tale of Two Cities. But if Adams liked him - and Adams also liked Vonnegut - then, well, next chance I got I picked up A Tale of Two Cities. And it was rough going at first. Such complex language! So many odd expressions and references, and words I didn't know! It was like trying to read Shakespeare in 9th grade all over again. But I immediately saw Dickens's influence on Adams, and that helped me appreciate it, and I pushed on, even though I wasn't always certain that I understood perfectly everything I was reading. But eventually I was hooked, probably about two thirds of the way along. It's not a very long book, comparatively, so that helped.
I'm sure you're quite mistaken about his writing being rushed and sloppy. This man worked himself into an early old age and death. Rushed and sloppy are the powerpoint bullet outline screenplay pitches masquerading as novels that seem to be popular today. As for the complexity of style, I love it. Strunk and White's principles of concision are meant for scientific writing, and do not apply to literature, in my opinion.
Try Our Mutual Friend. One chapter every day or two. I'd recommend the Penguin Classics paperback editions. They have very helpful end-notes and other interesting appendices, including samples of Dickens's working notes, which are fascinating.
Good luck.
Last edited by glen922; 05-25-2010 at 09:10 PM. Reason: clarification
My best advice: skim. I am nearly done with my first Dickens novel (David Copperfield, fyi) and so far I have found very little to induce me to skim -- but, honestly, I went into it with very clear plans: if ever it got boring, heavy handed, yawn-inducing even, I could skim through or even skip ahead. Now I know this amounts to sacrilege in some people's eyes, but the way I see it... well, Dickens wrote profusely, in a style that has scholars speaking more in pages than in sentences or paragraphs. Additionally, it seems to me Dickens sometimes wrote... well, if not carelessly, than at least not with the greatest of care. This opinion, then, only naturally induces me to put about as much effort into reading it as I think he put into writing it.
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