Then last year, when I was still waiting to hear back from law schools, two of my best friends bought me "Bleak House" for the holidays. I was apprehensive. It was long. And I feared it would be dull. And that it would lead to a sort of sinking disheartenment with the law -- something I still didn't know very much about -- before I had even started school. So I thanked them and put it on the shelf and went back to reading the New Yorker.
BUT. I finally started it this fall. And it's hysterical. And now I get it -- I get Dickens. He's funny. I mean, and also a great writer, master prose stylist, etc. But just fucking hysterical. And I don't even mind that the butt of the joke is often the British legal system. After all I'm not planning to work in a 19th-century Court of Chancery. If you can't laugh at Chancery, who can you laugh at?
My favorite sections by far are the descriptions of the lawyer, Mr. Tulkinghorn, who is introduced as follows: "The old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made good thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic wills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of family confidences; of which he is known to be the silent depository. There are noble Mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of parks, among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer noble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of Mr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school -- a phrase generally meaning any school that seems never to have been young -- and wears knee breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One peculiarity of his black clothes, and of his black stockings, be they silk or worsted, is, that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive to any glancing light, his dress is like himself."
Just phenomenal. All of which has led me to start making some pretty inane dinner-table conversation with Luke, along the lines of: "Did you know that Dickens was funny?" To which, as a PhD candidate studying the Victorian Novel, he has no choice but to reply: "Yes, literary scholarship has progressed far enough that we can now confirm that Dickens is, in fact, funny." At least, my inanity would deserve such a dry response. Luke is usually too sweet to supply one.
But who cares. I have 800 pages left and I'm excited about it.
3 comments:
Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!
I always knew Dickens was funny, but only because my grandpa was constantly telling me funny stories from it, or pointing out some of those amazing names. Tulkinghorn! Guppy! But I had the same experience with Dostoevsky. Being the sulky young man I was, I had circled around Fyodor, assuming it was the duty of any dark-eyed hater of "society" and "boredom" to plunge in...finally, I was drawn to "Notes from the Underground" because it was short, and because of descriptions like this one on Amazon: "A predecessor to such monumental works such as Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Notes From Underground represents a turning point in Dostoyevsky's writing towards the more political side. In this work we follow the unnamed narrator of the story, who disillusioned by the oppression and corruption of the society in which he lives withdraws from that society into the underground. A dark and politically charged novel, "Notes From Underground" shows Dostoyevsky at his best."
Ok, here's what's missing in that description: "Notes" is freaking hilarious! It's a satire, even a parody, of all the things in the Amazon description. I think maybe translation has something to do with it, I read Pevear and Volokhonsky's translation, and I heard later they really tickled forth the humor for the first time. Anyway, I was simultaneously embarrassed, as much of what he mocked was my own mopey banality, and thrilled. Wait, it's a classic, and it's funny? I had no idea that was possible. I plunged deeply into Dostoyevsky after that...it wasn't always that funny (he certainly wasn't the brilliant comedian Dickens was), but there were definitely comic riffs all over the place. Made him seem less monolithic, more like a friend. A CRAZY friend for sure, but someone I could hang out with.
Thank you so much for this great comment! You have totally sold me on Dostoyevsky. I guess we shouldn't be too surprised that the humor in these works is sometimes overlooked -- after all, we've noticed the same phenomenon with the film adaptations of the Dickens we've been watching. It sort of reminds me of the way that Jane Austen has been co-opted by the great Hollywood romance machine. Every now and then it just makes you want to scream -- "She was making fun of romance, too!!"
Also, you get extra points for conjuring up a great image of the high school you -- "sulky" is certainly not a word I would use to describe you now.
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