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AUTHOR: Dickens - pondering out loud
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=5675
Author:  Dreaming Marianne [ Sun Feb 08, 2009 8:25 pm ]
Post subject:  AUTHOR: Dickens - pondering out loud
I remember when I was about 17 or so, commenting to a lecturer that I couldn't stand Dickens - the way he flags up jokes about three pages in advance, the massively over-eggs them with a huge sideways wink thing. I only ever managed three or four of them because I found them hugely tedious. His response was that I would like them when I was older.

Now, ten years later, I can't help but feel that this was a hugely patronising thing to say. Why shouldn't someone dislike Dickens? I don't like Terry Pratchett or Ben Elton either for much the same reasons as I have stated above. I can appreciate that Dickens was a weighty form of social history, but why shouldnt it be just as valid to dislike his literary work as any other author.

Sorry - waffly in extreme.
Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sun Feb 08, 2009 8:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
I completely agree!

I don't really like Shakespeare - I've never really been able to say why, but there is something about his writing that really gets to me - and everyone has always just assumed it's because I'm too young to get it. Ah, well, I have an exam this year where I have to point out all of the weak points in 'The Winter's Tale', rather than just being nice about him :lol:

I'm probably with you on Dickens, as well. I can remember reading 'A Christmas Carol', but I never really read any others. Same goes for the Bronte sisters - though I'm sort of in the mood to try reading 'Wuthering Heights' again, and see if I get slightly further than the first two pages.

Sorry for the added waffle.
Author:  abbeybufo [ Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
I've never liked Dickens' novels - or Thomas Hardy's, for that matter, which for a native of Dorset, is heretical in the extreme [I do like his poetry!] - and I wasn't over-keen on Wuthering Heights when I had to read it for my first degree. But I was in my thirties when I did that, and I can imagine I'd have devoured it at the age of 15 or so.

I enjoy Terry Pratchett tremendously, though :lol:
Author:  Kate [ Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
I don't like Dickens at all either. Great Expectations was one of my set works in school and I had to read The Old Curiosity Shop in university. Hardest tasks ever. I also was supposed to read The Pickwick Papers for uni but only got about a fifth of the way in and just couldn't.

I can imagine though, that they'd be more digestible in their original serialised format.
Author:  Alison H [ Sun Feb 08, 2009 9:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
I'm not keen on either Dickens (can't stand his patronising attitude towards Northerners in Hard Times) or Shakespeare (I appreciate that people writing in Elizabethan times had to flatter the Tudors, but thanks to him about 15 generations of people have grown up with inaccurate impressions of 15th century history! Also, some of his stuff is really pretty tedious, and he made EBDisms - I remember our GCSE texts having notes about them :lol: ).

A university lecturer once had a right go at me for daring to criticise More's Utopia, and said that it was very "presumptuous" for anyone, "especially an undergraduate", to criticise the great Thomas More. I'm still annoyed about that over 15 years later :evil: ! Why should anyone have to say that someone's writing is super-wonderful when they think it isn't?
Author:  Emma A [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Miss Cromwell, in Antonia Forest's Cricket Term, gives Nicola a "remedial reading" list after the latter is caught with The Mask of Apollo, a book supposedly limited to the Sixth (Nicola is in Lower IV). The list includes some Dickens, which Nicola complains about, and Miss Cromwell says, "Every educated person should have read some, if not all." She then comments that Nicola should enjoy Henry Esmond, since "Dickens-haters invariably enjoy Thackeray." (Bear in mind that Miss Cromwell is a maths teacher.)

I haven't read much Dickens (Great Expectations only) and no Thackeray, so was Miss Cromwell right?
Author:  Mia [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Emma A wrote:
I haven't read much Dickens (Great Expectations only) and no Thackeray, so was Miss Cromwell right?


But I love Dickens and Thackeray! :lol:

If you don't like Dickens, try Emile Zola, slightly more readable IMHO
Author:  Emma A [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Mia wrote:
If you don't like Dickens, try Emile Zola, slightly more readable IMHO

A lot depends on the translation (since my French is no way good enough to read Zola in the original!) - I remember looking at three different versions of Stendhal's The Red and the Black, and with two of them, I didn't even understand the first paragraph!

I keep trying Dickens, but fail to get more than about 100 pages into any of the novels.
Author:  JS [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 3:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
I read a few Dickens (Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Oliver Twist) at uni and enjoyed them. But I started Great Expectations a couple of years ago for book club and couldn't stand it. So I'm the opposite of what your lecturer said, Marianne.

Having said that, I tried to read Jane Austen too young and hated it - just found it so arch and mannered - then came back to them at the age of 18 or so and loved them. Still do love them and reread them all every couple of years. I just didn't 'get' the comedy in my early teens.

A bit off topic but I've never liked Fawlty Towers or Monty Python - and I think Catch 22 and, indeed, Catcher on the Rye, are massively over-rated.
Author:  MaryR [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 5:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Alison H wrote:
A university lecturer once had a right go at me for daring to criticise More's Utopia, and said that it was very "presumptuous" for anyone, "especially an undergraduate", to criticise the great Thomas More. I'm still annoyed about that over 15 years later :evil: ! Why should anyone have to say that someone's writing is super-wonderful when they think it isn't?

:shock: But isn't the whole point of university to learn to be a critical thinker and to be able to substantiate what we think from the text? :shock: We can't just slavishly follow someone else's point of view. One man's meat is another man's poison and all that.
Author:  abbeybufo [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 8:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Emma A wrote:
I haven't read much Dickens (Great Expectations only) and no Thackeray, so was Miss Cromwell right?


Not keen on Thackeray either; never managed to finish one - I enjoy Austen, Trollope and George Eliot, though
Author:  Kate [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 9:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
JS wrote:
A bit off topic but I've never liked Fawlty Towers or Monty Python - and I think Catch 22 and, indeed, Catcher on the Rye, are massively over-rated.

I don't like Catcher in the Rye at all. But I like the rest of the things on your list there!
Author:  Abi [ Mon Feb 09, 2009 9:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
I quite enjoyed 'A Christmas Carol' and 'Nicholas Nickleby' but gave up on 'A Tale of Two Cities' after thirty pages. I don't think I would bother with Dickens now - life's too short!

Slightly OT but has anyone ever tried 'Ulysses' :shock: ? Reading that nearly killed me... I did it, but to this day have absolutely NO idea what it was all about.
Author:  Cath V-P [ Wed Feb 11, 2009 12:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
i got to about p120 with Ulysses, and that was that for me, although I enjoyed Dubliners, and could appreciate, without exactly enjoying, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

As far as Dickens goes, I am one of the people who steadily warmed to him as I got older, after not really appreciating him when I first read him, but I don't like everything he wrote! Favourites would have to be David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, and Bleak House, although as far as the last is concerned, I seem to dislike more than I like (smacking Esther Summerson for her irritating coyness would be very high on my agenda!), and yet oddly enough that doesn't seem to matter when I read it, which says something about Dickens' power as a writer.
Author:  JS [ Wed Feb 11, 2009 6:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Quote:
Slightly OT but has anyone ever tried 'Ulysses' ? Reading that nearly killed me... I did it, but to this day have absolutely NO idea what it was all about.


Had to read it for my degree - twice. The first time was in second year and I basically forced my way through it, reading it every tea-break and lunchbreak in my summer job and not understanding it at all. in fourth year I took a much more relaxed approach and actually managed to - well, enjoy probably isn't the word, but I could appreciate it.

As for Finnegan's Wake... Was he having a laugh or what?
Author:  Jennie [ Thu Feb 12, 2009 3:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Wahtever you do, don' try to read Martin Chuzzlewit, life is far tooshort
Author:  Nightwing [ Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Jennie wrote:
Wahtever you do, don' try to read Martin Chuzzlewit, life is far tooshort


I've always thought that every time I've considered reading War and Peace...
Author:  Abi [ Thu Feb 12, 2009 10:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Nightwing wrote:
Jennie wrote:
Wahtever you do, don' try to read Martin Chuzzlewit, life is far tooshort


I've always thought that every time I've considered reading War and Peace...

Me too... reading the synopsis took long enough :lol: .
Author:  Lottie [ Thu Feb 12, 2009 11:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Abi wrote:
Nightwing wrote:
Jennie wrote:
Wahtever you do, don' try to read Martin Chuzzlewit, life is far tooshort


I've always thought that every time I've considered reading War and Peace...

Me too... reading the synopsis took long enough :lol: .

Whereas I enjoyed War and Peace, probably helped by the BBC's adaptation, although I have to admit to skimming over some of the more detailed bits of the battle scenes :oops: , but I've never been able to finish anything by Dickens. Although I haven't actually tried since I was at school, but nothing I've ever learned about any of them since, has ever tempted me to try again.
Author:  Dreaming Marianne [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
JS wrote:
Quote:
As for Finnegan's Wake... Was he having a laugh or what?


Yes.
Author:  Kate [ Sat Feb 14, 2009 12:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
JS wrote:
Quote:
Slightly OT but has anyone ever tried 'Ulysses' ? Reading that nearly killed me... I did it, but to this day have absolutely NO idea what it was all about.


Had to read it for my degree - twice. The first time was in second year and I basically forced my way through it, reading it every tea-break and lunchbreak in my summer job and not understanding it at all. in fourth year I took a much more relaxed approach and actually managed to - well, enjoy probably isn't the word, but I could appreciate it.


I had to read it for my degree too. But we were told to read it slowly, in bits, in order to appreciate it and enjoy the language more than anything else. I did quite enjoy it - I read a few paragraphs a night and it took the whole year of university.
Author:  andydaly [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 1:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
I remember telling a lecturer in college that I hated Yeats, found him pompous, arrogant and self-important. The lecturer told me that I was missing the point, that Yeats was part of an heroic tradition, with the implication that I was too young and unschooled to appreciate the great man he was. It is - God almighty! - fifteen years later, and I still hate Yeats' work so much that I kind of spit a bit when I talk about him, so I sympathise with you on that, Dreaming Marianne - what a condescending response to your considered opinion!

On the other hand, I found reading Dickens like wading through treacle when I was in my teens, but I genuinely did start to enjoy it as I got older. The flagging up jokes in advance does annoy me, but to balance that out, he does make me laugh - there's a bit in one of his books about a character getting lost in the bed curtains after a night on the booze that cracks me up.

War and Peace - life is undoubtedly too short. Reading Ulysses reminds me a bit of dancing, if you overthink it you can't enjoy it, where if you let it flow, you enjoy it more.
Author:  Lucy [ Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Kate wrote:
JS wrote:
A bit off topic but I've never liked Fawlty Towers or Monty Python - and I think Catch 22 and, indeed, Catcher on the Rye, are massively over-rated.

I don't like Catcher in the Rye at all. But I like the rest of the things on your list there!


I adored Catcher when I was 16 / 17 but find it slightly painful to read now (although at best I can vaguely remember how I felt when I first read it).

Never been able to stomach Dickens in the slightest although I generally love 19th century novels (Wilkie Collins is my all time favourite author). I am thinking of doing an OU degree in Literature and have just bought Great Expectations to see if I can manage to get through it or not. We shall see...
Author:  MaryR [ Sat Feb 21, 2009 9:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Dickens - pondering out loud
Speaking of one's fondness - or otherwise - for Dickens, Anita Brookner was interviewed for today's Telegraph, and when asked who were her favourite authors, she replied:

Quote:
Dickens, first and foremost. My father gave me every volume of Dickens, one for Christmas, one for my birthday, until I'd read the lot. I think young people love Dickens. The funny names to begin with, and the sense of right and wrong.
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