Forum / Oliver Twist

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  Dolemite

  Apr 30, 05:22am

  About 4/5ths through, in a very cheap edition of what's probably a hundred-year-old book that I bought for maybe a dollar or so years ago. One of those where the paper is so brown and weak that the corners break off every time you turn a page.

  Incredible book. If this is one of his that came out in installments in the newspapers of his age, I can see the whole of London being on tenterhooks waiting for the next installment.

  Just wonderful. Looking forward to reading more, and think I'll look for a bio of the man...

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  Jim V

  Apr 30, 06:11am

  Try the Dickens biography by GK Chesterton. How often do you get a biography of a genius written by another genius?

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  Dolemite

  Apr 30, 06:14am

  Dang! And almost contemporaries, eh?

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  Jim V

  Apr 30, 06:50am

  People sometimes credit Chesterton for establishing Dickens as a great writer. Dickens was very much out of favor and all but forgotten when Chesterton brought him back into the light.

  Not many people would argue with the fact that when it comes to Dickens, there is no better scholar than Chesterton.

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  Dolemite

  Apr 30, 02:45pm

  What put me off Dickens (my entire life) is how he has been "Santa Claused," so to speak, by the entertainment biz, namely the "Christmas Carol" cartoon with Ebenezer Scrooge and the like.

  It seems as if once you've been co-opted by these forces you've been sannatized for the masses.

  It's the same thing as being put on a stamp, like Elvis and Martiin Lurther King. You've been sterilized, neutalized, made iinto a symbol that can be manipulated by those in power, and so forth and so on...

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  Darryl Price

  Apr 30, 02:46pm

  I agree with the Chesterton vote. You'll find out some confounding things, but I think all you really need is right there in the books.He thrilled many an audience in his day simply by reading his words out loud to a packed and hushed room.

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  Gessy Alvarez

  Apr 30, 03:58pm

  “The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.” I had this quote written in one of my high school notebooks.

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  Bill Yarrow

  Apr 30, 05:16pm

  Gessy,
  The quote, you probably know, comes from Chesterton's Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens, a really great book, one of my favorites on Dickens. I recommend it highly. The quote is from his essay on The Pickwick Papers and it's one of the best essays in the book.

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  Gessy Alvarez

  Apr 30, 06:05pm

  So interesting, Bill, I always assumed it was from Dickens but then again, I didn't reference the author on my notebook...perhaps I did read Chesterton at some point...so much of high school was lost in a daze.

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  Dolemite

  May 01, 05:54am

  The concluding scenes of the capture/death of Sikes, Fagin's last days in jail...

  breath-taking.

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