A Little Old-Fashioned
12 Apr
I’m the first to adhere to sensible advice– I crave it, I seek it out, I require advice. And one of the greatest pieces of advice I’ve ever seen or read anywhere has come from many, many sources, but it always sounds the same. That is that I should write naturally. As in, how I speak (within reason). Which means that every fifth word ends up “fuck”, and I have to edit a lot of it out, but in the end it does make things better that I was honest. Or as honest as I’m equipped to be– which is not very, but there’s a reason I want to tell long lies for a living when I grow up. I think that in many ways, this willingness to write the way we speak is a fairly new development in literature, in the last fifty years or so. (Seeing as before then, anything that honest would’ve been burned. People still said “bad” things, they just didn’t keep them for posterity. Or, if they did… well that’s another post altogether, and an interesting subject, but I’ll stop with the geek-out now.)
I bring this up because I had this impulse last week to walk to the book store and buy A Tale of Two Cities, which I hadn’t read in quite awhile. I graduated from high school ten years ago, and that was the last time I read it. I remembered really loving it then, and that it renewed my good opinion of Dickens, which had been recently crushed by several trips into his thickest and… let’s call them pointlessly complicated and wordy books. To be nice. But Meghan was talking about it in a comment on a former post here, and then NK Kingston and I just had a long discussion where it popped up, and I suddenly thought what the hell. Why not see if it was really that good.
So I literally got up out of my desk and walked there immediately, which takes about an hour one way; thankfully the weather in Virginia is finally awesome again. So I put my little four dollar copy down on the counter and the nice gentleman behind it smiles at me and says, “Good deal on a good book. It’s a little old-fashioned, but it’s a good book.”
I turned that over and over in my head on the walk home. Old-fashioned, but a good book.
I don’t like it. That qualifier bugs me, Old-fashioned, BUT still good, like that first part is diametrically opposed to the second, or that the two shouldn’t really be allowed to co-exist, but we’ll make a deal with the devil since it’s a good book and let it slip through.
I like Irvine Welsh and Chuck Palahniuk as much as the next chick, in their place. But come on, cut old Charles Dickens some slack. Sure he doesn’t say “fuck” every five words like some people with pitiful vocabularies. (Not naming names, but she’s writing this right now.) But Jesus H. Christ, that’s one of the best endings in the history of English literature, even when you know it’s coming. And it’s just a good fucking book, isn’t it? I know, I know, he wasn’t just talking about language, but about the heavy-handed description, the flat characterization (particularly in some cases), etc. Poor nice guy at the register, he meant well and was making very pleasant conversation with me. But I was annoyed anyhow.
That said, I’m fairly unwell right now. So maybe I’d be less grouchy about it if that were different, and I could put a coherent sentence together. (Which, as you might’ve noticed, is not coming easily today.) But still.
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Now playing: Oasis – Columbia
via FoxyTunes
You’ve made me want to have another shot at Dickens; which do you reccomend I try first, Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations?
While Dickens isn’t my favourite nineteenth century author (and, to be honest, he’s not what I’d call old fashioned, either, but then, I’m planning another shot at the Mabinogion, which predates Dickens by about 1400 years), I think that using the word old fashioned lumps everyone writing before the fifties into one homogenous group of canon. Litter-rat-yure. There’s a reason some books have survived as classics (though there’s some that baffle me, too), but I think that people assume that it means the books are no longer relevant. It’s a shame, really, because when so many books are lumped together it only takes one bad expereince (or even being told of one) to prejudice a person against a huge volume of widely varied literature that they’d probably enjoy.
I feel proud! I inspired a re-reading of Dickens.
Interestingly enough, seeing the comment one-before mine… the Mab is on my current pile of “to-read” books. Right next to Don Quixote, which honestly frightens me a little because that is ONE THICK BOOK, and from what I remember from my sampling of it last time (before the library cruelly made me return it) I’m going to want to try to finish it in one go.
Hm. I DO have a week of vacation coming up….
On the subject of one-dimensional characters… I’m trying to coherently pull together some thoughts on how DragonLance and early fairy tales are all full of one-dimensional characters (okay – maybe let out Raistlin and Tas)… maybe a certain kind of literature involves the very lack of complexity for the characters. Like, if they were deep, it would actually kind of get in the way.
@NK
I think Great Expectations is easier to slog through, but I don’t think that’s really a concern with you– English major that you were! A Tale of Two Cities is definitely better, and I didn’t mind his digressions from the story at all. Possibly because I knew they would be important to the story eventually, just from having read it before… but if you can use that idea to prop you up, it’s the place to go!
Totally agree about books being improperly branded as irrelevant. Wonder if that’s why we’re constantly repeating stupid mistakes… But in other news, I haven’t re-read Mabinogion (well, not the whole thing) since I was in high school either! Another for the list!
@Megh
You inspire a lot of things, dear. You and certain others we both know. Not to name names, but there are crackers involved.
I never read Don Quixote in its entirety, if you can believe it, but what I did read… I read in Spanish. Yes, there was a time when my Spanish was good enough to do that. God, it’s almost enough to make me think I should go back to school. (Then again, no.) That’s another good idea for the reading list! Bless the library.
But this is a very good point about the 1-d character– I think you have something there. And a lot of fantasy, because it’s so fairy-tale-like, could fall into that category. Of course sometimes it’s just laziness, and then we spot it, but in other cases it seems like it’s getting in the way of the intent of just… telling a good story. There’s a good thought!
While I’m thinking of it – it just hit me that I really should’ve plugged Mark’s ex-bandmate’s book, _A Bard’s Book of Pagan Songs_ – it’s sadly out of print, but you can still find it used on Amazon with the attendant CD.
Reason I mention this is that he does the Reader’s Digest version of the Mab though a series of songs. There are some I favor more than others, but it’s an amusing (and informative) distillation…. especially when you’re trying to keep track of characters.