What are you reading now?

[Anna]

Just about to start - Nicholas Nickelby! Blimey, it is a mammoth tome!

Yes, I know. But the BBC is really going all out on Dickens this season. Armando Iauannccio (how you spel it?) has his him on the comedian that he was. Loads of good Dickens stuff coming up

And, to think, I used to look forward to the new Martin Amis!!

[Don Basilio]

I read Nicholas Nickelby this spring. The theatrical scenes are absolutely wonderful. Family legend had it that an ancestor was a pupil at a Yorkshire school that may have been the original for Dotheboys Hall.

The character of Mrs Nickelby is one of the most infuriating parents in English literature.

[Chris Newman]

I am still reading John Tyrrell's "Years of a Life", the biography of Leoš Janáček. I am about two thirds of the way through Volume 1. Really fascinating. About 700 pages to go.

[aeolium]

The character of Mrs Nickelby is one of the most infuriating parents in English literature.

With some strong competitition from Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House and Mrs Pocket in Great Expectations (feckless, inadequate and downright cruel parents being something of a theme running through Dickens' work).

[french frank]

I'm still reading Our Mutual Friend . On page 352 which is about half way through. The trouble is that when Dickens brings in Twemlow again, I'd completely forgotten that he was in this novel. And who is Veneering? Still, Saturday Night is Reading Night. I've lit the fire in what I amusingly call 'the library' ready for a 5-log evening.

[Anna]

I'm still reading : Still, Saturday Night is Reading Night. I've lit the fire in what I amusingly call 'the library' ready for a 5-log evening.

Blimey, what I'd do for a real fire! Logs spitting and, sparks on the carpet! And stamping on them. And, omg, you can do toast ......... on a fork .............

[vinteuil]

I'm still reading Our Mutual Friend . And who is Veneering? .

My Dickens Encyclopaedia helpfully says that "... he and his wife take little part in the story, though their dinner table was a great place for hearing the voice of Society." You have of course encountered him, or will encounter him, in I : chaps 2, 10, 11, 17 ; II: chaps 3, 16 ; III : chap 17 ; IV : chap 17.

And Twemlow - the only gentleman in the entire novel...


PS I so envy you the fire. My 2012 plans include - an open fire...

[vinteuil]

Of late my reading has been rather dark and grisly - De Quincey On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, Simenon l'Homme de Londres, Eco The Prague Cemetery - so I thought that for light relief I wd turn to the autobiographical writings of the historian Richard Cobb - and, yes, Still Life: Scenes from a Tunbridge Wells Childhood does have something of an idyll about it - but the second volume - A Classical Education - about his time at Shrewsbury and Oxford - well, blow me down - it's a murder mystery with a schoolfriend who turns out to have been a matricide...

If I'm looking for calmer waters I'll have to revert to the James Woodforde Diary of a Country Parson...

[french frank]

And Twemlow - the only gentleman in the entire novel...

I could remember Twemlow was friend of Veneering, and the whole dinner-party crowd; but I couldn't remember how they fitted into the story. And now, suddenly, we're back with Boffin (who he? - we've just come from the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters where Rogue Riderhood has been resuscitated, to the disappointment of all).

I'm beginning to feel Dickens has something in common with what the BBC calls 'talent' - an ability to spin words endlessly, to the delight of an audience which has opted in, the words flow, filling the time available for their completion, they iterate, they reiterate, they recapitulate, they hark back to the past with their repetitions. The episodes are like slow-moving giants, lumbering towards a common meeting point where they will finally join hands, family reunited. Perhaps. I've never quite felt this with previous novels, but Our Mutual Friend is a bit of a challenge (not least because the print is so small ). Now on p 409.

It was a 4-log evening. Tonight the back parlour with the stove - good for griddling crumpets, keeping the soup pot warm and over brewing abominable coffee .

[aeolium]

I love the way in which Dickens in Our Mutual Friend, as in his other later novels, creates a whole world with many different characters and stories, some of which interlock and are resolved together; and not only stories, but several different themes (including some, such as the man 'recalled to life', which recur in several novels).

I am reading Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, which I never got round to reading because it looked like a huge tome of socio-economic theory, but in fact is a very readable account of the ideas of dissent in late C18 and early C19 England. I am also trying to read, with very imperfect Russian, a book of poems of Marina Tsetaeva.

[vinteuil]

the autobiographical writings of the historian Richard Cobb -

... for those who don't know him -

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-richard-cobb-1324236.html

http://thedabbler.co.uk/2011/03/dabbler-heroes-richard-cobb/

I was introduced to him through a series of late night Radio 3 talks some thirty (?) years ago (I think later taken up in his book 'Promenades') - I was immediately swept away - and much of my devotion to him - to Raymond Queneau - to the intimate details of Parisian life - is because of this serious Radio 3 series: o, how I hope similar things are going on now...

[Anna]

I've decided to delay embarking on another Dickens. I've just found in the bookcase something which I bought ages ago (for 50p I recall) which is The New Look by Harry Hopkins, A Social History of the Forties and Fifties in Britain (Secker & Warburg 1964) Looks fascinating with lots of illustrations and also about The Festival of Britain and Suez (which I know very little about)

[vinteuil]

I've decided to delay embarking on another Dickens.

... just to say - yes, wise move .

I love Dickens - but a bit of ventilation between one tome and another makes a lot of sense!

Incidentally, if I had to do a Desert Island Discs of Dickens - I think I wd take Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, Bleak House, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield. And perhaps Pickwick for the sheer fun of it..

[PatrickOD]

Pickwick [/I]for the sheer fun of it..

I wish I had been brave enough to say that, vinteuil, when I was a first year pupil. We had a class text 'Readings from Dickens', the favorite passage for the class being the opening of Great Expectations.
'Didn't anyone like the bit from the Pickwick Papers (the ice skating scene) ?'
'I did', says I.
Well........ can you imagine the interrogation that took place? I didn't think funny was a good enough reason. Mrs. Joe couldn't have made me feel more uncomfortable, thought it didn't come to Tickler.

[aeolium]

if I had to do a Desert Island Discs of Dickens - I think I wd take Our Mutual Friend, Great Expectations, Little Dorrit, Bleak House, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield. And perhaps Pickwick for the sheer fun of it..

Yes to all of those - and also A Tale of Two Cities and Edwin Drood (you'd have a long time to work out how it should be finished) - and perhaps Forster's Life of Dickens too.

Apropos Richard Cobb, I saw him give a talk on Queneau in the 1970s. I don't remember much about it except that there were a lot of anecdotes and, of course, quotations from Queneau (of whom I'd never heard then). Cobb was at that time quite a famous, though very unconventional, historian - I think since then the sort of history he was interested in has become much more fashionable.