When you decide to write a new biography of someone who already has a shelf full of tomes, with at least one of them claiming to be definitive, you need some sort of hook to hang it on, something to justify its existence. A trunk filled with newly discovered letters would be nice, or perhaps a newly complete collection of correspondence. A new journal, a long lost manuscript, a freshly resurrected contemporary account: any of these might do in a pinch. Such historical artifacts wanting, an author is left to find some novel intellectual approach to take to the material.
Such, of course is the problem awaiting any would be biographer of Charles Dickens. There is a contemporary account of his life by his long time friend John Forster. There is a G. K. Chesterton life that some credit with a Dickens revival at the beginning of the twentieth century. There is a massive two volume scholarly biography from 1953 by Edgar Johnson, which makes a reasonable claim to tell us everything we ever might have wanted to know about the novelist, and if we still had any questions, Peter Ackroyd added another equally massive one volume tome in 1992, and dished a little Dickens dirt while doing so.
Faced with this problem, Michael Slater's Charles Dickens, a new biography of this most eminent of the eminent Victorians, focuses on the prolific author's impressive output in the variety of lesser genres, those often given short shrift in contrast to the understandably lavish attention given to the novels. He says in a short preface that he has "been particularly concerned to place his novels in the context of the truly prodigious amount of other writing that he was constantly producing alongside the serial writing of these books, and to explore the web of connections between them and it, as well as connections with his superlative letters and his personal life." He goes on to point out that while these "other" writings contain much that is both characteristic of Dickens' major works and useful in understanding them, they are little known by any other than the Dickens aficionados and specialists.
Slater has a point. Dickens was a prolific writer. While working on his novels, he wrote sketches, letters, reviews and occasional essays for contemporary periodicals. He wrote pieces for the stage. He wrote shorter tales, travel books and a history for children. Some of this writing, like the annual Christmas tales were among Dickens most popular with his contemporaries, despite the fact that it is probably only A Christmas Carol that remains popular today. And as Slater's impressive scholarship shows, this work is indeed a neglected goldmine filled with nuggets of insight into the novels' themes, characters and plots, and in some cases an intrinsic value of its own.
If at times, Slater seems more concerned with the writing than the life—he barely mentions, for example, the birth of Dickens' son Walter, concentrating instead on the author's labor pains with Barnaby Rudge--who can gainsay him. After all, the only reason we are reading Dickens' life is that he wrote Barnaby Rudge, well maybe not Barnaby Rudge, specifically, but the novels that it stands for.
Still while the details of Dickens' life are here, they are sketchy at best, and if a reader is looking for a complete account of the writer's life rather than insights into his work, there are certainly better places to go.
Slater's Dickens biography is probably better suited to the scholar and the enthusiast than it is to the general reader, to the reader who wants to learn something about "The Mudfog Papers," The Haunted Man, Sunday Under Three Heads, and countless other minor pieces. The story of his life is here, but the reader will have to dig through a lot of ephemera to get at it.
Showing posts with label Dickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dickens. Show all posts
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Saturday, December 5, 2009
My iPod Addiction Meets My Book Addiction
A week or so ago I published a news brief on the demise of The Washington Post 's Book Worldpodcast. It was a podcast I had been listening to religiously almost from the day I got my first iPod. The books and literature section of the iTunes podcast directory was the first set of pages I visited, and what I found there was a veritable cornucopia of delight for any book lover with ear pods. This, before I even had a chance to get a look at the audio books pages. I began subscribing to everything that was there: The Guardian Books Podcast, Authors on Tour—Live, The Classic Tales Podcast , and on, and on.
Some of them I unceremoniously dumped after a few weeks. Book Lust With Nancy Pearl never quite delivered the titillation its title promised. KCRW's Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt was much too impressed with his own voice that more often than not his questions seemed to go on longer than the poor author's answers. Podcasts from Yale University were aimed at scholars with different priorities.
Some of them I kept around a little longer, the BBC's Book Reviews With Simon Mayo for example, and this despite the facts that for some reason he regularly had his panel of reviewers take the time to describe in detail the book jackets under discussion but even more importantly that they hardly ever found anything to dislike in any of the books they were talking about. Some like Book World disappeared of their own accord. The CBC's Talking Books, a feisty irreverent review show unfortunately called it quits after eleven years.
There were, thankfully, always replacements waiting on the bench to take their place. The serialized novel reading podcast Between the Covers replaced when it seemed obvious we were getting abridgements was succeeded by Magdalena Ball's Compulsive Reader by way of Australia courtesy of Blog Talk Radio. The overly erudite Harvard Press: Author Off The Page gave way to the BBC's World Book Club.
Now as I take the time to search for a replacement for the late lamented Book World, I count nineteen separate podcasts devoted to books and literature. This includes readings of poetry, short stories and novels, author interviews, book club discussions, and reviewers. It doesn't include theatrical podcasts, although to omit Shakespeare from the category of literature seems something of blunder, to say the least. It doesn't include podcasts that regularly feature authors and literary reviews in their more eclectic formats—podcasts of shows like NPR's Fresh Air and the BBC's Arts and Ideas. Nineteen despite the fact that often when a new book comes out, its author becomes ubiquitous. When Richard Price was on the road touting Lush Life, it was almost impossible to escape him. Recently, it's been Michael Chabon and Paul Rudnick making the rounds for their newly published essays. Repetition is one price of addiction.
As I look for number twenty, I try to define some criteria for the many candidates still out there. I look to those podcasts that have stood the test of time for models. Number one: I want a host who loves books, knows something about them, but is willing to allow the author the spotlight. I want someone like Terry Gross, whose guests are always taking the time to tell her how wonderful her questions are. I want someone like Eleanor Wachtel, the hostess of Writers and Company who seems to have read everything everyone of her weekly guests has written, yet never seems to pompously pontificate a la the Bookworm.
I want to hear what literate readers think about what they have read. The Slate book club discussions are always lively and informative whether they're talking about Tolstoy or Evelyn Waugh. The World Book Club opens up the discussion to ordinary readers, ordinary but perceptive, and allows them to ask questions of authors they admire. This is a scenario sure to appeal to any book lover.
Intelligent, dynamic readers, like those on PRI's Selected Shorts, with the capacity to bring life to the printed page, would be welcome. There is something exciting about hearing the poetry of Robert Burns in the native dialect that overwhelms the fact that the American ear might not always understand what is being said. There is something to be learned from hearing an author read her own work. One thinks of a writer like Dickens enthralling audiences with his readings Bill Sykes'death and Scrooge's transformation. Podcasts that give us the opportunity to hear modern day Dickenses are something to be cherished.
Finally, I want a podcast that is adventurous, that is willing to take its listeners beyond the tried and true, the popular novel that everyone is reading—not that I don't want that too. I want a show to make me aware of the writer I haven't heard about, the book that has gone under the radar, the new voice. I want to hear about the Dickens they'll be talking about in ten years.
Some of them I unceremoniously dumped after a few weeks. Book Lust With Nancy Pearl never quite delivered the titillation its title promised. KCRW's Bookworm, Michael Silverblatt was much too impressed with his own voice that more often than not his questions seemed to go on longer than the poor author's answers. Podcasts from Yale University were aimed at scholars with different priorities.
Some of them I kept around a little longer, the BBC's Book Reviews With Simon Mayo for example, and this despite the facts that for some reason he regularly had his panel of reviewers take the time to describe in detail the book jackets under discussion but even more importantly that they hardly ever found anything to dislike in any of the books they were talking about. Some like Book World disappeared of their own accord. The CBC's Talking Books, a feisty irreverent review show unfortunately called it quits after eleven years.
There were, thankfully, always replacements waiting on the bench to take their place. The serialized novel reading podcast Between the Covers replaced when it seemed obvious we were getting abridgements was succeeded by Magdalena Ball's Compulsive Reader by way of Australia courtesy of Blog Talk Radio. The overly erudite Harvard Press: Author Off The Page gave way to the BBC's World Book Club.
Now as I take the time to search for a replacement for the late lamented Book World, I count nineteen separate podcasts devoted to books and literature. This includes readings of poetry, short stories and novels, author interviews, book club discussions, and reviewers. It doesn't include theatrical podcasts, although to omit Shakespeare from the category of literature seems something of blunder, to say the least. It doesn't include podcasts that regularly feature authors and literary reviews in their more eclectic formats—podcasts of shows like NPR's Fresh Air and the BBC's Arts and Ideas. Nineteen despite the fact that often when a new book comes out, its author becomes ubiquitous. When Richard Price was on the road touting Lush Life, it was almost impossible to escape him. Recently, it's been Michael Chabon and Paul Rudnick making the rounds for their newly published essays. Repetition is one price of addiction.
As I look for number twenty, I try to define some criteria for the many candidates still out there. I look to those podcasts that have stood the test of time for models. Number one: I want a host who loves books, knows something about them, but is willing to allow the author the spotlight. I want someone like Terry Gross, whose guests are always taking the time to tell her how wonderful her questions are. I want someone like Eleanor Wachtel, the hostess of Writers and Company who seems to have read everything everyone of her weekly guests has written, yet never seems to pompously pontificate a la the Bookworm.
I want to hear what literate readers think about what they have read. The Slate book club discussions are always lively and informative whether they're talking about Tolstoy or Evelyn Waugh. The World Book Club opens up the discussion to ordinary readers, ordinary but perceptive, and allows them to ask questions of authors they admire. This is a scenario sure to appeal to any book lover.
Intelligent, dynamic readers, like those on PRI's Selected Shorts, with the capacity to bring life to the printed page, would be welcome. There is something exciting about hearing the poetry of Robert Burns in the native dialect that overwhelms the fact that the American ear might not always understand what is being said. There is something to be learned from hearing an author read her own work. One thinks of a writer like Dickens enthralling audiences with his readings Bill Sykes'death and Scrooge's transformation. Podcasts that give us the opportunity to hear modern day Dickenses are something to be cherished.
Finally, I want a podcast that is adventurous, that is willing to take its listeners beyond the tried and true, the popular novel that everyone is reading—not that I don't want that too. I want a show to make me aware of the writer I haven't heard about, the book that has gone under the radar, the new voice. I want to hear about the Dickens they'll be talking about in ten years.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Stockwood on Dickens1: a satire
Charles Dickens did not write fiction.
I begin categorically with the conclusion I have reached after many long years of study, the ongoing perusal of the work itself, the intensive investigation of the personal record–epistles private and epistles public, diaries, journals, account books, memoirs, drafts rough and drafts polished, editorial annotations, as well as the exhaustive examination of dusty periodical archives and journalistic ephemera, not to mention the many anecdotes and mots bon and otherwise, perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not handed down orally from generation to generation.
Charles Dickens did not write fiction.
If fiction is invention out of slender air,2 if fiction is that which has never existed but in the imagination of its author, if fiction is that pleasant falsehood which beguiles its readers into the suspension of their skeptical reluctance to believe,3 then I say, with complete and uncompromising confidence in my assertion–Fiction, Charles Dickens did not write.
It is not so much a question of the actual occurrence of the events he describes, or even he actual existence of those–the Pickwicks, the Copperfields,4 or even the Chuzzlewits–who people these events, historical record demonstrates with authority that these are indeed events that never happened to people that never were. Never was a Pickwick imprisoned for breach of promise, indeed never was Pickwick. Never did a Copperfield meet a Murdstone. No Chuzzlewit foot ever touched American shore.
Yet if there weren’t ever a Dorrit bundled off to the Marshallsea, a Magwitch hidden among the gravestones, a Gradgrind bound in chains of fact, if, in fact, they never were, it is demonstrable to any and all thinking readers, that they have, despite that fact, become. They are. Incontrovertibly and without the slightest of doubt, they are. Who is there who is not aware of their being? Who is it who has not heard the words of the orphan Twist asking for more, smelled the reek of Fagin’s lair, cringed with terror at Bill Sykes? Who is it who does not know of Scrooge surnamed Ebenezer visited upon a Christmas Eve by that trio of spirits as real in their unreality as the man himself? And is this man’s Christmas song5 etched so finely into the collection of consciousnesses that define the modern psyche in the modern world to be dismissed as mere spanish castle simply because it was birthed on a page and suckled at the breast of the muse rather than the midwife.6
If this Scrooge be not reality, are we to conclude then that reality lies in some long forgotten Ebenezer Somebody–some Ebenezer Doe–who ate his Christmas turkey surrounded by whatever family and friends he had managed to accumulate over his years, are we to conclude that reality lies with this Ebenezer Somebody, of whom we have never heard, of whom we know nothing whatever, of whom we are certain that if indeed he ever were, he might just as well never have been. Ebenezer Somebody is fiction. Ebenezer Scrooge is.
There are worlds of Ebenezer Somebodies. People who were, but are no longer; gone and forgotten, it is they who are the stuff of fiction. Puffs of smoke, it is they who have no reality. Truth is that which lasts. Truth is not here today and gone tomorrow. Truth is what remains when the ephemera is washed away. Ebenezer Somebodies are fictions written by God. They along with their works are writ in water.7
Moreover, the lives that Dickens creates beget the life of the world in which they live: Boffin begets dust heaps. Mrs. Jellyby begets telescopic charity. Mr. Bumble begets the workhouse. The Infant Phenomenon begets the theatre.
Without Dickens the nineteenth century in England would exist on a forgotten back shelf in the stacks of some little used library.
There would be no Yorkshire schools for the twenty first century were there no Nicholas Nickleby; no poor laws, were it not for Oliver Twist. There would be no Court of Cancery were it not for Jarndyce and Jarndyce; no dying brickmakers and stricken crossing sweeps, were it not for Esther Summerson. Old Krook’s spontaneous combustion is no more a fact to be debated than the opening of the Crystal Palace, and surely an event with a wider currency.
Again, Charles Dickens did not write fiction. Charles Dickens birthed living beings, living then and living now.
------------
1Being the transcript of a lecture delivered by Professor Sumner Stockwood of the University of New Thermopylae to the annual meeting of the Associated Dickensians of Eden in 2004, with annotations by Dr. Farber L Fenwick. Adjunct Instructor, Coketown Community College.
2The reader must forgive Professor Stockwood’s less effective attempts at humor (ed.)
3I here paraphrase the comments of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1798 letter to Dorothy, the sister of his erstwhile colleague in that year’s publication of the Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth. [Since as of this date, no such letter has come to light, conjecture has it that Professor Stockwood may well have in mind the more famous statement about “suspension of disbelief” in Coleridge’s Biographia Litteraria (ed.)
4Some scholars may quarrel with this assertion with reference to such events as young Copperfield’s sojourn in the boot blacking factory. Such quibbles would seem to be mere matters of semantics (ed.)
5See note 2 (ed.).
6The reader will forgive my use of what some may consider a cliche metaphor for the production of art, but in the light of my contention, it does seem fitting.
7Stockwood’s reference is to the inscription on the grave of the young Romantic poet.
I begin categorically with the conclusion I have reached after many long years of study, the ongoing perusal of the work itself, the intensive investigation of the personal record–epistles private and epistles public, diaries, journals, account books, memoirs, drafts rough and drafts polished, editorial annotations, as well as the exhaustive examination of dusty periodical archives and journalistic ephemera, not to mention the many anecdotes and mots bon and otherwise, perhaps apocryphal, perhaps not handed down orally from generation to generation.
Charles Dickens did not write fiction.
If fiction is invention out of slender air,2 if fiction is that which has never existed but in the imagination of its author, if fiction is that pleasant falsehood which beguiles its readers into the suspension of their skeptical reluctance to believe,3 then I say, with complete and uncompromising confidence in my assertion–Fiction, Charles Dickens did not write.
It is not so much a question of the actual occurrence of the events he describes, or even he actual existence of those–the Pickwicks, the Copperfields,4 or even the Chuzzlewits–who people these events, historical record demonstrates with authority that these are indeed events that never happened to people that never were. Never was a Pickwick imprisoned for breach of promise, indeed never was Pickwick. Never did a Copperfield meet a Murdstone. No Chuzzlewit foot ever touched American shore.
Yet if there weren’t ever a Dorrit bundled off to the Marshallsea, a Magwitch hidden among the gravestones, a Gradgrind bound in chains of fact, if, in fact, they never were, it is demonstrable to any and all thinking readers, that they have, despite that fact, become. They are. Incontrovertibly and without the slightest of doubt, they are. Who is there who is not aware of their being? Who is it who has not heard the words of the orphan Twist asking for more, smelled the reek of Fagin’s lair, cringed with terror at Bill Sykes? Who is it who does not know of Scrooge surnamed Ebenezer visited upon a Christmas Eve by that trio of spirits as real in their unreality as the man himself? And is this man’s Christmas song5 etched so finely into the collection of consciousnesses that define the modern psyche in the modern world to be dismissed as mere spanish castle simply because it was birthed on a page and suckled at the breast of the muse rather than the midwife.6
If this Scrooge be not reality, are we to conclude then that reality lies in some long forgotten Ebenezer Somebody–some Ebenezer Doe–who ate his Christmas turkey surrounded by whatever family and friends he had managed to accumulate over his years, are we to conclude that reality lies with this Ebenezer Somebody, of whom we have never heard, of whom we know nothing whatever, of whom we are certain that if indeed he ever were, he might just as well never have been. Ebenezer Somebody is fiction. Ebenezer Scrooge is.
There are worlds of Ebenezer Somebodies. People who were, but are no longer; gone and forgotten, it is they who are the stuff of fiction. Puffs of smoke, it is they who have no reality. Truth is that which lasts. Truth is not here today and gone tomorrow. Truth is what remains when the ephemera is washed away. Ebenezer Somebodies are fictions written by God. They along with their works are writ in water.7
Moreover, the lives that Dickens creates beget the life of the world in which they live: Boffin begets dust heaps. Mrs. Jellyby begets telescopic charity. Mr. Bumble begets the workhouse. The Infant Phenomenon begets the theatre.
Without Dickens the nineteenth century in England would exist on a forgotten back shelf in the stacks of some little used library.
There would be no Yorkshire schools for the twenty first century were there no Nicholas Nickleby; no poor laws, were it not for Oliver Twist. There would be no Court of Cancery were it not for Jarndyce and Jarndyce; no dying brickmakers and stricken crossing sweeps, were it not for Esther Summerson. Old Krook’s spontaneous combustion is no more a fact to be debated than the opening of the Crystal Palace, and surely an event with a wider currency.
Again, Charles Dickens did not write fiction. Charles Dickens birthed living beings, living then and living now.
------------
1Being the transcript of a lecture delivered by Professor Sumner Stockwood of the University of New Thermopylae to the annual meeting of the Associated Dickensians of Eden in 2004, with annotations by Dr. Farber L Fenwick. Adjunct Instructor, Coketown Community College.
2The reader must forgive Professor Stockwood’s less effective attempts at humor (ed.)
3I here paraphrase the comments of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1798 letter to Dorothy, the sister of his erstwhile colleague in that year’s publication of the Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth. [Since as of this date, no such letter has come to light, conjecture has it that Professor Stockwood may well have in mind the more famous statement about “suspension of disbelief” in Coleridge’s Biographia Litteraria (ed.)
4Some scholars may quarrel with this assertion with reference to such events as young Copperfield’s sojourn in the boot blacking factory. Such quibbles would seem to be mere matters of semantics (ed.)
5See note 2 (ed.).
6The reader will forgive my use of what some may consider a cliche metaphor for the production of art, but in the light of my contention, it does seem fitting.
7Stockwood’s reference is to the inscription on the grave of the young Romantic poet.
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