Problem with Dickens.

[Infinitefox]

Does anyone else here find his stuff hard to read? His sentences seem to be un-necessarily complex. Also he uses a lot of words that, even though I know the meaning, make it hard for me to connect and understand what he's saying, if that makes any sense. It gets to the point where I put the book down and can't finish it.

[mayneverhave]

I have a few problems with Dickens, myself. None of them, however, involve his being difficult.

I'm not sure leveling the charge of erudition or complexity against an author is really a valid criticism.

[Jozanny]

I'd echo mayneverhave nearly word for word here Infinite. Dickens can occasionally strain the humanity of his characters by pushing them too perilously close to caricature, but he is no Henry James, which in terms of meaning is a compliment. I find his diction fairly straight forward, which may be part of his staying power. Can you offer a sample passage to highlight your difficulty?

[JBI]

Dickens was good, but not for all the books still in print. As far as a popular one like Hard Times goes, that is only good to an extent - the language comes nowhere near what he achieves in Bleak House.

I think the problem with Dickens is that he seems a very divided author. There are the good books, which have a more poetic style, whereas there are the rougher books, which rely more on social commentary, and less on style.

I think I'm of the camp that rejects the whole F. R. Leavis reading for moral notion, and when I choose to read novels, I am looking for an exploration into how the author handles his writing, of which Dickens does superbly half the time, but the other half flops.

I'm probably a minority opinion on this, but really, half his works seem too base, too periodic, and not poetic enough. He seems to have achieved the most when he was minipulating language more than pounding out opinions.

[limajean]

I've only read Hard Times and Great Expectations, and that was enough for me.

I find his writing bleak, uneventful and boring.

[Jozanny]

Not that I want to defend Dickens, but Hard Times came at the end of his career lima, and he was exhausted, and he was not capable of being England's Steinbeck-- in the sense that Steinbeck used social plight as a deliberate protest. I rather like Great Expectations.

I need to amend that. Dickens was a Victorian Steinbeck, but he did not have Steinbeck's ability to capture the trauma of the underclass in an industrial context, or, to make mass suffering its own metaphor. Steinbeck is a real leftist in this sense, whereas Dickens, I mean yes, he saw inequity, but his solutions for it were sort of via a sentimental indirection.

JBI, I have read enough of Dickens to have a glimmer of what you mean, but Charles was not the *writer's writer* that made up the genius of Flaubert, James and company. Dickens was much closer to being the public romance novelist, which some scholars deem Princess Casamassima, trying to save it.

But that was Henry James's problem in his mid-career. He could not be Dickens by virtue of castigating Dickens in his own work.

[limajean]

It doesn't matter.
His name is on the novel - like the rest of his.
And it was crap.

[Dr. Hill]

That's absolutely ridiculous. Dickens was a great author. Tale of Two Cities is an epic novel.

[limajean]

It's a matter of opinion.

To me, his writing is boring and dry.

[Jozanny]

Originally Posted by limajean

It's a matter of opinion.

To me, his writing is boring and dry.

Aren't you shutting the door on learning how to offer more nuanced critiques of successful authors with such sweeping statements?

Dickens is a great writer, flawed, like many, but he was the franchise of his day lima. No lover of literature can dismiss this.

[limajean]

Why must I enjoy Dickens?

I yes, love literature, it doesn't mean I MUST love Dickens. And i don't, so I won't pretend to.
I felt no connection to his books, for me to enjoy a book and want to continue reading it, it must intrigue me - his work doesn't.

[Hank Stamper]

i dont think dickens ever set out to be poetic - his books are nearly always a satire on society and he is striving to make a clear point about society's ills, im not saying you cant be poetic if you are doing that, but for dickens it was more important to get his message across than dress it up in flowery language

it has to be remembered as well that much of what he wrote was serialised and he was churning this stuff out according to deadline, which was obviously a constraint on his style.. that being said, i dont think there is anything wrong with his style.. i enjoy his caricatures (even if this can sometimes err on the ridiculous) and find him very amusing at times..

[hoope]

Dicken is one of my fav. novelist , infact he was the first i read for. So i adour him alot .
About his writing .. YEA! some of them are a bit too complex to read .. he uses high & difficult vocabulary but yet not in all of his novels . I noticed that in HARD TIMES .. however Christmas Carol was great , Oliver twist .. and many others i find it not hard to read .

[hoope]

Originally Posted by limajean

It's a matter of opinion.

To me, his writing is boring and dry.

Well it aint dry .. nor boring ..
He has a great imagination & if he's not your type of writer Yet no need to describe it boriing .. since you mentioned that you didn't read much for him.

[wessexgirl]

Originally Posted by Hank Stamper

i dont think dickens ever set out to be poetic - his books are nearly always a satire on society and he is striving to make a clear point about society's ills, im not saying you cant be poetic if you are doing that, but for dickens it was more important to get his message across than dress it up in flowery language

it has to be remembered as well that much of what he wrote was serialised and he was churning this stuff out according to deadline, which was obviously a constraint on his style.. that being said, i dont think there is anything wrong with his style.. i enjoy his caricatures (even if this can sometimes err on the ridiculous) and find him very amusing at times..

I agree completely. I love Dickens.

Lima, no-one says you have to like him, but you can't say he's boring, or crap. His novels are peopled with characters, sometimes as Hank says, verging on the ridiculous, but they are memorable. I don't think there's another writer, apart from Shakespeare, where his characters are so widely known, even by people who haven't necessarily read them. These characters have taken on a life of their own outside of literature. Think of Oliver Twist with the Artful Dodger and Fagin; or Mr Micawber and Uriah Heep from David Copperfield. What about Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, or Wackford Squeers and poor Smike from Dotheboys Hall in Nicholas Nickleby? Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without A Christmas Carol and Scrooge and Tiny Tim. Mrs Gamp has even given her name to an umbrella. These are just a few of the many. There are loads of weird and wonderful characters, and I think literature would be a lot poorer without them and their brilliant creator Dickens. He certainly is not boring or crap.