February 7, 2012, is the 200th
birthday of the great social activist writer and the Shakespeare of the novel, Charles
Dickens. Like novelist John Irving, I must say, "I became a writer because
I read Charles Dickens." I first picked up A Tale of Two Cities in a library right after I’d turned nine years
old. I ran back the next week to load my arms with Dickens’s other novels, and
I’ve been reading them again and again ever since. At one time when I was
weighing an offer of a fellowship to do a Ph.D. in English, I knew, if I took
it, that I would write my dissertation on Dickens and Bleak House or perhaps Our
Mutual Friend.
How has this writer remained so
popular, revered, and read for almost 200 years? And why am I listing him among
literary mystery novelists?
In answer to the second question,
many of Dickens’s books were built around a mystery and/or crime—Oliver Twist (full of criminals, a nasty
murder, and a mystery), Nicholas Nickleby
(riddled with crimes and mysteries), Barnaby
Rudge (a murder mystery with an insurrection), Martin Chuzzlewit (multiple murders), Bleak House (murder and the first police detective!), A Tale of Two Cities (crammed with
crimes and mysteries), Great Expectations
(begins with a jailbreak, loaded with crimes & mysteries), Our Mutual Friend (identity theft and
murder), and of course, the unfinished The
Mystery of Edwin Drood (plotting for murder, drug addiction, possible murder).
Also, Dickens is an author the academic and literary elites have, at times,
named too popular to be of literary worth, much as they do with modern mystery
writers.
As for the first question, I study Dickens
to this day, trying to learn the answer to that. If I knew it, I could perhaps
be as great and greatly loved a writer myself. Failing that, I can best answer
it with quotes from other writers about Dickens.
"The reason I love him so
deeply is that, having experienced the lower depths, he never ceased, till the
day he died, to commit himself, both in his work and in his life, to trying to
right the wrongs inflicted by society, above all, perhaps by giving the
dispossessed a voice. From the moment he started to write, he spoke for the
people, and the people loved him for it, as do I." — Simon Callow
"I cannot lose the opportunity
of saying how much I love and esteem him for what he has taught me through his
writings -- and for the genial influence that these writings spread around them
wherever they go. Never having seen Boz in the body, we have yet had many a tête-à-tête." — Walt Whitman
"For all his faults, there is
still no one to touch him -- for breadth, for depth (especially in the later
novels), for moral seriousness, hilarious comedy, social criticism and for
filling a room with characters you suddenly know better than some of your
closest friends." — Katherine
Ashenburg
"Books such as ‘Great
Expectations’ were part of the great moral revolution which made [Great
Britain] prosperous, ordered and civilised. They are crucial to our
civilisation. Like all great moral books, it makes the reader envy the
good characters their goodness, and want to emulate them. It made us recognise
the good and the bad in ourselves -- in fact Dickens ceaselessly did this,
probably because he was himself struggling all the time against his own cruelty
and selfishness, and loathed these things in others." — Peter Hitchens
“The art of Dickens was the most
exquisite of arts: it was the art of enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a very
human writer, had to be a very human being; he had his faults and sensibilities
in a strong degree; and I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed
everybody in his daily life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and
everybody has enjoyed everybody in those books even till to-day.” — G.K. Chesterton
“Dickens is huge—like the sky. Pick
any page of Dickens and it’s immediately recognisable as him, yet he might be
doing social satire, or farce, or horror, or a psychological study of a
murderer—or any combination of these. He’s always much more than you remember—more
playful, more surreal, more campaigning, more sentimental, more Victorian, more
good and more bad." — Susannah
Clarke
Thomas Carlyle upon hearing of his
death said: “The good, the gentle,
high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickens—every inch of him an honest man.”
Happy 200th birthday, Charlie! You’re still the Inimitable!
Thank you for neatly elucidating the Dickens-as-a mystery-writer argument. I had just this discussion with my son a few days ago, and couldn't think from where I had drawn that conclusion, other than from years of reading Dickens. Not far from the house of Poe, I am Deborah Leibowitz.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by, Deborah. It was the mysteries and suspense at the heart of all of Dickens' books which drove the narrative engine. He loved mysteries and secrets and secrets-within-secrets.
ReplyDeleteAnd Poe, another great influence on the mystery. I envy you your closeness to his home.