The Mystery of John Jasper

I read this book faithfully after Dombey and then just didn't write about it. Sort of fitting that my ardour would have cooled with the unfinished novel. And yet, the novel itself was interesting and exciting. Rather strange to call it The Mystery of Edwin Drood when Dickens made it clear almost from the first page who was going to be the murderer.

The opium addict; in his opium den; consorting with lowlifes and having no control whatsoever on himself. The one thing I'm glad about is that Rosa Bud, unlike the majority of Dickens's heroines, did not succumb to Jasper's threats and suffer in silence. Instead she ran to her guardian (the Angular man who had been in love with her pretty mother) and threw herself on his protection and mercy. And everyone rallied around her and sayanged her and protected her. And in that time she even managed to fall in love with a sailor who had come into a fortune, not bad for the dear little doll.

I would have liked to have known a bit more of how the war between the two formidable females, Miss Twinkleton and the Bilikin would have played out. It was light relief during a heavy time. I would have also liked to have known who Datchery was and who sent him to investigate Jasper.

"Yer lie!" Deputy Winks was always good for a few laughs though I would have dearly loved to give him the drubbing of his life.

And so the narrative breaks off where the net is closing in around John Jasper. I am still curious to know how Dickens would have disposed of him. And what happened to Neville Landless since he clearly did not get the girl. And whether the beautiful Helena Landless would have married Crisparkle.

Dombey and daughter

So I'm wondering if I should go to Backyard tomorrow night or put it off until Mark's birthday...I haven't been this year, which of course has nothing to do with Dickens, just me rambling.

I wish I had written this post right after I had raced through Dombey and Son, unable to sleep, unable to put it down, picking it up surreptitiously at the office and in between assignments and during tea breaks.

In short, I loved it.

I didn't expect to.

But I did.

Before I had only read the first page and the utter coldness of the principle character and the fact that he was such a male chauvinist pig, put me off. Indefinitely. In fact, if I hadn't make a resolution to read ALL of Dickens, I would have probably given Dombey and Son a miss for the rest of my life.

But that was not to be. Dickens 2012 came along, and with it, my extraordinary resolution to read all of Dickens. And that included Dombey. Which doesn't tell you very much about Dombey. Just about my not reading it.

So I read. And I started to get into it. Even the coldness of Dombey failed to ice me over. I guess, it's because Dickens juxtaposed that with the stuff that was going on underneath his glacial exterior. How hurt he was that his son clung to his daughter instead of him. How he resented his affections going elsewhere. How the flatterers pandered to his weakest side and lulled him into a false sense of security.

His obdurate refusal of his daughter's love. The part where, when his son died, he wanted his tombstone to read "beloved only child" rather than "beloved only son" because he actually forgot that he had a daughter.

When the second Mrs Dombey came along, I was ready for her. But Dickens subverted the expectations. Edith was no cruel stepmother. In fact, she loved her stepdaughter more than she loved her husband. Recognising that she had been purchased by Mr Dombey like a piece of fine art, she refused to act like a piece of property he could show off. No, she was proud and angry and unwilling to submit. She fought him tooth and nail. And he got back at her the only way he knew how. Through Florence whom she loved. And by issuing his orders via a menial (his lieutenant as a subtle way of saying that the menial, a man, was superior to her).

I don't blame her for what she did. He pushed her over the edge. So she utterly destroyed him.

Edith was a very complex character...neither an angel nor a devil, but both in equal parts. It was the presence of people like her, and that woman whose name I cannot remember (see, it's been a while since I finished and I can't decide what to read next because Edwin Drood is not gripping me like it should) and when I had just finished I was so full of the story.

In the end I felt sorry for Mr Dombey when he lost everything and when he was forgiven (sort of the way Cordelia forgave Lear...well, Florence didn't "forgive" him, she begged his forgiveness for running away) I was happy.

That is the magic of Dickens. He can make you hate a character, but not too much that you do not forgive it. And if he has really painted something so awful that you cannot, he usually kills it off.

Witness that dwarf in Old Curiosity Shop. And Mr Carker in Dombey. I'm surprised that he didn't kill of Horlick in Great Expectations (although he did kill of Pip's sister whom he may have hated worse than Horlick).

I found Paul's death a lot more touching than Little Nell's. Well, you know how I felt about little Nell, and more importantly, her stupid grandfather. There was an element of that with Florence and her father...her inability to see his flaws.

Anyway, I loved the book and I read it very quickly.

And now I have Edwin Drood, Hard Times, the Christmas books and Sketches by Boz to go.

A far far better thing

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known..."

So I went from the interminable Little Dorrit to the much much better Tale of Two Cities. It was fantastic. I read it through in a few days (unlike Little Dorrit which dragged on for like, a month or more) and by the end I was racing through. I cried at the closing lines, of course even though I expected them.

Sidney Carton's character was interesting; in the end he proved the better man and he sacrificed everything for his love. And lived on evermore in her son named for him.

Charles Darnay, on the other hand, was colourless. I think he put his life and that of his family, needlessly at risk by going to Paris to "rescue" an old servant and a good man's life was lost because of it. Some may argue that Carton's life was worth nothing anyway, because of his aimlessness and the fact that he had lost the only thing which could have concentrated his affected, his stray powers, and made a man of him. And this death allowed him a nobility and honour that his life didn't.

But still, it was hard to see him go. Offering comfort to the poor seamstress at the end, dying with a "sublime peace" on his face.

So much needless slaughter. Madame Guilottine was a character in itself.

Madame Defarge was a monster of course. I quite liked the final confrontation between her and Miss Pross. I wish it had been more drawn out and more comic in character. I wish that stupid woman had suffered a little bit more when she died. But no, she just expired and then was locked in a house and left to rot. The other assassins were not as compelling - Vengeance, Jacques the Third...

Dickens made a case for the Revolution. But he did not agree with the way it was conducted. On the one hand, he excused it. On the other, he punished it. Especially at the end, when he prophesied what was going to happen to each of the main characters. That was satisfying, somehow. But after Madame Defarge was killed, I didn't have ire enough left over for the rest.

It was a good, good book.

I enjoyed it thoroughly.

And now, on to Dombey and Son.

The Last of Little Dorrit

And finally, finally I finished. Ironic that because Chubs co-opted my iPad to play Plants and Zombies, I was forced to borrow Jackie's leather-bound first edition to finish the book. This was in somewhat better condition than Martin Chuzzlewit and I read it straight through.

I realise I have been unfair to the book. OK, some parts were dreary and Little Dorrit was so good that she got on my nerves sometimes. I could better understand Fanny or Miss Wade or even Tattycoram.

But she got the object of her life which was to serve the man that she loved, raise him on a pedestal, take care of him, sacrifice herself for him. I guess it was a happy ending of sorts.

And the mysteries as they unravelled....after all that build-up, I couldn't feel the actual explanation was something of a let down. And it was not even very clear, when it came to the codicil that Mrs Clennam was supposed to have suppressed. The explanation as to why she didn't burn it and have done with it was poor, insufficient. She justified everything through the hard lens of her assumed religion (death and damnation forever). She could have come up with a suitable justification for burning the paper and thus, not thrusting herself into all this...

As for her suddenly having the energy to get up on her two useless legs and make her way to Marshalsea, I mean, that was utterly ridiculous. But I guess the ridiculousness was not the point, but the force of feeling that impelled it. It's like a Shakesperian play; you're not supposed to logically explain it - it is a play of emotions, the drama of what people are capable of and the stories they tell themselves about it.

Pet disappointed me but I guess her parents were somewhat to blame there - they had spoilt her to such a degree that her insistence of marrying that entirely unsuitable Henry Gowan (one of two characters in the book that didn't get his proper comeuppance, the other being Flintwich) and then suffering through it, cut off from her parents (except in terms of money which he unashamedly took) without a murmur because she loved him too much to credit his faults - it seems that Dickens's conception of a woman who loves is a woman who overlooks and continues to overlook the faults of her beloved. And in his narratives, that is seen as a virtue rather than the crass stupidity it is.

I think that women may go into these relationships blind, but their eyes are gradually opened and when they come to value the idiot they married at his true worth, they either leave him (preferable) or turn against him and make both their lives a living hell. I don't think they continue to meekly love him and excuse his faults.

But after Little Dorrit and after Nell, it would seem that Dickens takes this particular brand of stupidity as something to be proud of, write home about. It took me so long to get through this because it kept jarring on me.

The Patriarch who should have been a greater villain or affected me more, didn't affect me at all. The scenes that included him seemed to be lacking in life and colour.

Flintwich and Blandois were too unpleasant and made me want to kill each. So Blandois is crushed to death and Flintwich escapes (is that fair?).

My favourite character, the one who always made me laugh (yes, right through to the pathetic, affecting finale) was Mr F's Aunt. I don't think Flora was quite so successful a creation (when it comes to women who ramble and lose their point in the rambling, I prefer Mrs Nickleby) I was always giggling and chortling out loud whenever she had a scene. She was an absurdity thrown in at the right and wrong places to defuse the tension and I loved her. She was a truly Dickensian creation. As were all of them, but maybe, the others, so serious, so caricatured...were not so.

At least I learned where "prunes and prisms" come from. Mrs General. And Jo, from Little Women, who ranted against prunes and prisms...well, now I know what she was talking about.

The thing about reading Dickens is that you start to see references to him throughout other people's fiction and life stories. Now I am reading Emily Dickinson's biography and there are plenty of Dickensian references. Whether it's to Micawber or Sam Weller (I'm so glad I started with David Copperfield and finally know who Micawber is).

I'm watching Bleak House now, which my friend Zarinah sent me as a Christmas present. It's a very good production, although I think more could have been made of the closeness between Ada and Esther and I don't think it did justice to the character of John Jarndyce. Here it suggests that he was sexually attracted to Esther, rather than regarding her as a benevolent patron. Maybe the benevolent patron bit wouldn't have translated into a 21st century production. And Esther speaks sharply to him, which she would, on no account, have done.

I write this from JB. It's three days after Christmas. The house has emptied out today. And Arnold is sleeping in the hall, because I'm here. And because I've had a cup of coffee (so as not to waste it), I'm wide awake and will be watching some more Bleak House.

One thing I notice is that because of the sheer number of characters in the book, the miniseries has difficulty in introducing/developing them all, except for the main characters. And those too, some of them not to well-developed.

Thinking about it, maybe Ada Clare was not well-developed in the book either. She was pretty, she had an affectionate heart, she was loyal. And that was it. Richard and Esther were much more well-drawn.

My next book will be A Tale of Two Cities. I feel that after such a book as Little Dorrit, I need to reward myself with one of his best.

Stalling

I haven't anything to update, really. I haven't picked up Little Dorrit since I laid it down and wrote that last post. It doesn't call to me like Bleak House did or even Martin Chuzzlewit or Nicholas Nickleby or Our Mutual Friend.

No, it lies a cold dead thing in my iPad...I haven't been able to get past the meeting of the two villains.

There is something to be said for CS Lewis's Perelandra where he described the evil as tedious more than anything else. Going through the new machinations of a truly horrendous mind is boring.

I guess that's why they invented people like Hannibal Lechter to up the ante and to make people keep watching. And they have to keep upping the ante, putting creativity and imagination into new and wonderful ways for people to be cruel and base and simply disgusting.

That's why I like children's (though not Young Adult books, especially Robert Cormier). Your villain (though bad) can't be too evil. You can have Jardis. But not Lechter. (Although we do now that Voldermort tortured and killed...it's just that the last three books are YA and most of his torture is offstage).

So instead of reading Little Dorrit, I read Cheryl's Strayed's Wild, Cameron Gunn's Ben & Me and have now started on Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club. In England I bought a whole lot of literary biographies and autobiographies (Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Eudora Welty, Lytton Strachey, Emily Dickinson, Vladimir Nabokov), Vasari's Life of Artists (Part 1) and Dorothy Wordsworth's journals.

Yesterday I was at Kinokuniya buying people a whole lot of books for Christmas.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with Dickens. But I thought I would record it nonetheless, as this seems to be the only blog I update.

I haven't renewed my car insurance or road tax and yesterday I got stopped by police during a roadblock. In fact, Marking yesterday seems to have been an ill-advised project all around. I was too tired, I lost my phone and now, I don't know how I'm going to pay for my car insurance. I wonder if they will let me put it on the card.

On the bright side most of the deadlines have been meet and there is nothing urgent I have to deliver for the rest of the year.

Maggot has just walked in stretched himself out in my room. Which I was sort of in the middle of cleaning.

Today, I decided to hell with other obligations, I'd stay in and do the chores that had gone begging for the past few weeks.

And then I could wrap and label presents, write out cards for my colleagues and then, and then... by the end of next week, I'm done.

But I'm not looking forward to Christmas this year. No Dickensian good cheer in this part of the woods.

Little Dorrit...eventually

So I've started and am halfway through (at least I hope I'm halfway through) my next Dickens, Little Dorrit. Being in England as I update it makes it come alive for me. I know this is one of his more difficult novels to read (one uncle who had to do it for literature described it as painfully boring and my sister Jackie was not able to finish it).

I wondered why. I guess evil (and there is so much evil in this) is tedious. You're just skimming through it hoping to get to the part where he deals effectively with the villain, cutting them down in their not-so-prime. The thing I love most about Dickens is that he has a Sidneyesque sense of justice. Bad men who beat their wives die. (I'm hoping this remains true in this book because the bad man or men, are particularly noxious).

But ploughing through it, (sometimes excessive virtue and a refusal to blame or to see someone for what they are - Nell-Grandfather, Little Dorrit-Father - tires me. But I can see why Little Dorrit keeps making excuses for her weak and selfish father, sacrificing herself, denying herself to gratify his every whim so he can live in the Marshalsea Prison like a poor approximation of a lord. She worries about the whole family. And they, a product of their upbringing and surroundings, take it for granted and don't really care very much for her.

Other people see her for what she is though, and other people try to help her.

Arthur Clennam's former sweetheart Flora makes me laugh with her confusing speech, no commas, always hinting at something that doesn't exist anymore...pretending when there is no cause to. But it's her aunt, the woman with the glaring visage and vicious bark that makes me chortle so hard I spit out my soup.I think she is a creation of genius and to find a character like her (up there with the man in smalls who courted Mrs Nickleby over the fence, after throwing vegetable marrows at her head) is, well, a delightful surprise. I love it when she fixes Arthur Clenham with that glare.

And then comes out with something like:

"There are milestones on the way to Dover."

Which doesn't mean anything, but nobody seems to mind, except for Arthur, who is trying desperately to grasp what is behind the malevolence of these apparently unconnected, disjointed statements.

Ah me.

Well, I'll update again, when I have finished the book. And when I have, there will only be three more to go.

Methinks, it is possible that I'll be done with Dickens 2012, why, in 2012 itself.

And then I'll move on to Hardy.

And we went out of the ruined place...

OK I finished it. I thought I'd read about 100 iPad pages and then I kept reading and reading (because it gets tremendously exciting at the end and he slowly peels away the curtain to reveal more and more about the mysteries of the book).

I guess I started liking Pip when he first stopped thinking of himself and started thinking, well, first of Herbert, then of Magwitch...and I guess even if he abandoned Joe and Biddy, the consciousness of this abandonment was always there with him, like a prod.

Joe was as simple and selfless as Tom Pinch in Martin Chuzzlewit. And yet, he's a more finished character than Pinch. He had enough pride not to be patronised. But his goodness in coming to the rescue after Pip had abandoned him, and to never cast it up to him or demand gratitude or, when Pip at the end begged to be forgiven, to say there was nothing to forgive. People like him make you cry with their simple goodness. There is a quality of purity of heart, that is so rare, that when you meet characters like that, you pause, smile and want to be around them. The absence of malice is so refreshing, ice particles in your lungs.

Funnily enough, in reading this, I kept thinking of Angels in America. Maybe because, except for Roy Cohn, there was no real villain. I felt sorry for the guys who were supposed to be the villains...they were either weak or well meaning...Human beings are so complex. They are the very good and the very bad, but most people fall in between.

And Pip, who was so flawed, yet human, I started to like him when he warmed up to Magwitch, when he stayed with him through the trial, visited him, held his hand, read to him in jail, and eased his passing. That, to me, was even better, than how he served Herbert.

I think Pip became admirable. And the scene where he says goodbye to Estella, who remains cold and indifferent...the passion, wow, I think that was the best one in the book. I would copy it here. But I'm too lazy and it's nearly three in the morning and I'm tired.

I read somewhere that there were two endings. So after reading the ending in the little e-book (which I think was the second revised ending) I went online to look for the first one. I know the first one is preferred by the purists. And when I read this book all those years ago at 14 (understanding and appreciating so very little of it that I wonder I bothered) I read the original ending. I remember that little Pip had been with Pip and Estella kissed him, thinking he was Pip's child.

But I loved the second ending. The first, I thought, was too hard. Abrupt. The second was beautiful, sad, melancholy. It was open-ended and ambiguous. On the one hand, it could be read as if Pip and Estella finally got together. But it seemed more like a resolution of something outstanding, some hurt, some pain, some indifference, some bitterness. She had suffered much, it had tempered her proud spirit and now she understood what his heart had been. He had suffered much, it had tempered his spirit in turn, and he had never wavered in loving her.

By the bye, Pip's description of his hopeless love, how he had never been happy for one minute in her presence, but never wanted to be out of it, how he could see her for what she was, faults and all, but it didn't make the slightest bit of difference, that was what rang truest for me. I guess you can keep coming back to Great Expectations throughout your life (why had I only read it once?) and there would be something new to wring your heart.

Miss Havisham...she was vivid and frightening...the dreams discarded and decayed, the insistence on an exaggerated mourning which blighted not only her life but all those around, the conflagration consuming that tattered wedding dress and her flesh in the bargain, metaphor upon metaphor upon metaphor.

There were so many broken people in this book. And I guess you can see what a master Dickens is, because he gathers up their tatters and holds them all together. Broken as they are. There are others who try for this level of honesty or realism but who fail signally. You know they fail, because you lose interest in the characters, close the book halfway or find your attention wandering.

Not so with Great Expectations. Here, your attention is fixed on the page and you turn each breathlessly.

What a cast of characters. Joe and Biddy only come in at the beginning and the end, yet their spectres pervade young Pip's imaginings. He keeps them in a corner of his soul, and there is always the flavour of guilt in everything he does, thinks, feels...

I loved this book. And maybe after I'm done, I will come back to it.

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.