"Dickens makes his books blaze up not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire"

I wish I could write like this.

- Yumbo

I have always liked Virginia Woolf

The English novelist George Meredith, shortly before his death, said of Dickens:

Dickens was the incarnation of cockneydom, a caricaturist who aped the moralist; he should have kept to his short stories. If his novels are read at all in the future people will wonder what we saw in him.

A similar line of thought - though Dear ms Woolf put it ever so much better.

Kurt

Dickens will be read and appreciated when Ms. Woolf is a footnote. If that.
Early 20th-century wit slashing the oh-so-last-century 1800s is far too smug. So I shall be smug at it in my turn.

And the fact that today, outside of a university, no one reads Meredith is richly ironic! Can't you just picture the sneer as old George sputters and spits, "cockneydom"? I love how time shows up the arrogant and intemperate for the fools they are - "if his novels are read at all in the future" indeed!

Yeah well I had Dickens rammed down my throat in school & on the BBC when in truth there are far better writers out there both ancient & modern that just go ignored & should be included in the curriculum, or at least given a better chance.

To me it shows laziness, lack of purpose & imagination on the part of the examiners.

Thank heavens for libraries.

I like Dickens. Woolf, I could take or leave. Now as for that Dan Brown...ick.

Nabokov on Dickens:

"All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle. Let us be proud of our being vertebrates, for we are vertebrates tipped at the head with a divine flame. The brain only continues the spine: the wick really goes through the whole length of the candle. If we are not capable of enjoying that shiver, if we cannot enjoy literature, then let us give up the whole thing and concentrate on our comics, our videos, our books-of-the-week. But I think Dickens will prove stronger."

Great quote. I've never read Nabokov, but hearing so much of him I must get a hold of one of his books some day.

It's strange, I love Dickens, though I haven't read him all that much. I think I've read about 5 or 6 of his books - he is a master of character, that's for sure. Though it is a trite phrase, he paints life-like pictures with words. One thing was I could never finish Bleak House; I was about seven eigthths through it -- there was some huzz-buzz going on at the time which led to distraction anyway -- but I started to lose the thread. The denseness of his writing is bewildering when it goes on for such a long time. The next time I read Dickens I have decided to find out before starting whether or not the book was serialized, and if so I will read it in parts, or slowly as a sort of secondary book, all the time taking notes in a commonplace-book. Reas it as it was meant to be read, as it were. I think that will help me next time.

Also, I've started reading Woolf's 'To the Lighthouse' and I'm quite enjoying her style.

Patrick