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Continuing The Dickens Marathon
Jul. 3rd, 2021 09:43 amI was very happy to put Barnaby Rudge aside and pick up Martin Chuzzlewit, but...
After the first spate of extraordinary creativity Dickens is beginning to flag- maturing as a writer even as he waits for his second wind...
Dickens said his purpose in writing Martin Chuzzlewit was to pillory selfishness. That's one enormous barn door of a target and while one can't pretend he misses, it's a question whether it was worth shooting at in the first place. Almost alone among his major novels Martin Chuzzlewit has an air about it of not needing to have been written. I'm plodding through- and while the writing is frequently tremendous- there's nothing about the story that draws me in or makes me want to carry on reading. Mr Pecksniff is one of the great characters and Tom Pinch a delightful one- but somehow that's not enough; one also needs to feel that the narrative they're caught up in is a compelling one- and that its outcome matters....
After the first spate of extraordinary creativity Dickens is beginning to flag- maturing as a writer even as he waits for his second wind...
Dickens said his purpose in writing Martin Chuzzlewit was to pillory selfishness. That's one enormous barn door of a target and while one can't pretend he misses, it's a question whether it was worth shooting at in the first place. Almost alone among his major novels Martin Chuzzlewit has an air about it of not needing to have been written. I'm plodding through- and while the writing is frequently tremendous- there's nothing about the story that draws me in or makes me want to carry on reading. Mr Pecksniff is one of the great characters and Tom Pinch a delightful one- but somehow that's not enough; one also needs to feel that the narrative they're caught up in is a compelling one- and that its outcome matters....
