Charles Dickens is often criticized for creating characters that don’t grow and mature. There are days I might add that in that case, art is merely reflecting life. In any case, in Martin Chuzzlewit the maturation of the eponymous Martin as a plot line is nearly obliterated by the presence of a grandiose fellow who  Read the Rest…

The very least you need to know about Oliver Twist for when you want to sound like you know lots of other things is that it’s the one about the pickpockets. (“Oh yes, that’s the one about the pickpockets.”) Beyond that some of the characters are among the most famous in Dickens: Fagin, a creepy  Read the Rest…

I loved this book. Loved it. If you’re an old English major whose read some Dickens, can keep David and Oliver separate, can knit a pattern of names in the fog of Chancery, and are looking for a Dickens that’s completely new to you, read Barnaby Rudge. Or make it your first Dickens. I was  Read the Rest…

If you have never read Dickens, this isn’t the book to start with.  Not that I think it’s the one Dickens novel everyone hopes to read before they die but I thought that made for a good opening sentence.  I wonder how often the novel is taught or if many people –like me for instance—get  Read the Rest…

I read The Old Curiosity Shop because it was the only Dickens checked in at the Greenwood branch of the library on the day I went looking for a new Dickens.  Throughout its 554 pages plus explanatory notes, I thought I didn’t like it but I kept reading.  Every day I measured the pages read  Read the Rest…

I knew the day was coming that I would embark on a cruise through Charles Dickens, I just didn’t know when the ship would sail. Reading the 38 plays of Shakespeare two summers ago was as a life-changing experience, not just because Shakespeare became like the grandfather I never knew, but also because I didn’t  Read the Rest…

It’s been a discombobulating week, and not helped by the time change.  I particularly loathe Spring Forward. It throws me worse than Fall Back in terms of messing with my sleep.  In addition I am a morning person who counts the growing minutes of spring morning light like Scrooge counts his money.  I yearn for  Read the Rest…

I got interested in George Orwell because I was looking for something to listen to in the car that was not music—something to give my ears a rest.  At the library I noticed a series of lectures on disc called The World of George Orwell.   I thought, “He has a world?”  Actually we all do,  Read the Rest…

I was going to subtitle this post “The essays of George Orwell” but then no one would read it.  I’m afraid it would have the same result as something Orwell says in Poetry and the Microphone: “Arnold Bennett was hardly exaggerating when he said that in the English-speaking countries the word ‘poetry’ would disperse a  Read the Rest…

In an effort to prolong the aura of my recent thirty hours in Portland I am writing up notes made over a bowl of beef stew in the Heathman Hotel restaurant.  My former piano student Anna got me a rate at the hotel “where service is still an art” through her work at Rubicon International  Read the Rest…