tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post7631976059444552954..comments2024-03-17T05:07:13.710-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: A type of the triumphant monster, Death - too much starch in Dombey's puddingAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-76821738159051910472016-06-09T11:28:29.169-05:002016-06-09T11:28:29.169-05:00Well, thanks. Dickens is a touchstone, certainly....Well, thanks. Dickens is a touchstone, certainly. I'm in the group that enjoys - can sometimes barely believe - the increase in complexity and his creative restlessness.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-23495330546079377842016-06-09T08:57:11.641-05:002016-06-09T08:57:11.641-05:00Now that I have been reading your blog for awhile ...Now that I have been reading your blog for awhile and have read your three entries on Dombey and Son, I regret that I have not been following you for years and years, but mere months.<br /><br />Much of what you say re: Dombey is both fair and insightful. With respect to Dickens "thickening" style, I think as you progress through the later works you will either: regret the loss of the free-and-easy humor of the first loose baggy monsters and dislike the increasing complexity and thickness of Dickens's control over his themes and symbols, or you will have just the opposite reaction, or perhaps like me, you will find something in every novel to love and something to criticize. Dombey is the starting point of the mature Dickens; with Chuzzlewit he had decided to use a theme (selfishness), and in Dombey he adds to his theme (pride and the consequences of its loss) his first great controlling metaphor--the train. In almost every novel afterwards (maybe Tale of Two Cities is an exception) the critical reader can find that both plots and characters' actions are subordinated and aligned either with the theme, the metaphor, or both. Great Expectations is possibly his finest artistic achievement in that regard, but I still like Our Mutual Friend the most (and even Edwin Drood for that matter) because, to the very end--his last day alive on earth--he was trying new ground, pushing his art, deepening (or "thickening") his style, not always sucessfully, but with masterly purpose and frequent elegance almost never found in the early works (unless the very exuberance of his youth in Nicholas Nickleby and Pickwick Papers can pass for a form of elegance and seeming effortlessness).<br /><br />I must find and read all of your Dickens comments. You get him in a way I admire.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00014242874264804584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-79586666695802198142009-07-29T23:18:25.233-05:002009-07-29T23:18:25.233-05:00Ah, you're no doubt right about Rembrant just ...Ah, you're no doubt right about Rembrant just being good at it all. If HE were a writer,I guess he would have been Dickens AND Dostoyevsky. Humbling . . .willyouwontyouhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12390618031980669348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-32878187293341505952009-07-21T10:06:35.366-05:002009-07-21T10:06:35.366-05:00Welcome to the LitBlogLand. Many friendly places t...Welcome to the LitBlogLand. Many friendly places to visit in the column to the right.<br /><br />A remarkable thing about Dickens is that he could write successful novels with virtually no multi-dimensional, well-rounded characters (e.g., <i>Oliver Twist</i>). His imagination was so rich that it barely mattered. <br /><br />Sometimes. I'm not so sure about <i>Great Expectations</i>, though. Would that novel work with a flavorless, unchanging Pip? Well, maybe Miss Havisham, the Aged P, and so on are sufficient.<br /><br />Maybe it's also worth mentioning that Dickens never repeated the <i>Bleak House</i> first/third experiment. Almost no one did. I wonder why that is.<br /><br />One objection - Rembrandt was one of the <a href="http://www.rembrandtpainting.net/about_rembrandt_drawings.htm" rel="nofollow">world's greatest sketch artists</a>!Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-30794139299424891632009-07-20T11:20:03.824-05:002009-07-20T11:20:03.824-05:00This is my first entry into the blogosphere, the c...This is my first entry into the blogosphere, the cyber-dance. I don't know the steps yet, though. <br /><br />I haven't read Dicken's DOMBEY AND SONS but find interesting your thesis about D's developing greater character depth though the switch to a first person narrator in DAVID COPPERFIELD. Still, complexity of character would not seem to be D's great strength--even later characters seem pretty two-dimensional. It's the amazing variety of odd and particular types--with memorable names, quirky notions, defining dress and mannerisms-- that makes D's characters so unforgettable. We don't forget imperious Miss Havisham or the gentle clerk Wemmick and his sweet, doddering "Aged Parent," for example, in GREAT EXPECTATIONS. They're not really rounded or complex characters, though. Many types repeat: the naive child; the decent worker; the corrupt lawyer or official; the upperclass snob; the crusading reformer. Not much change or learning seems to take place, though. Perhaps Dickens is essentially an exceptionally deft sketch artist--not a Rembrant.willyouwontyouhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12390618031980669348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-31886252759567296732009-07-18T16:38:10.883-05:002009-07-18T16:38:10.883-05:00What a great and insightful comment. I think that...What a great and insightful comment. I think that Dickens must have spent a fair amount of time thinking about just how to do his narration and how much of a narrative voice he wanted. He came up with a solution in Bleak House that works out very well---the voice of a narrator (presumably Dickens himself--perhaps the megalosaurus mentioned in the famous first paragraph) and then Esther...sunt_lacrimae_rerumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05659053841051896981noreply@blogger.com