欧宝娱乐

So, Dickens, the most beloved English author since Shakespeare. How good is he? Is he as good as Tolstoy? No, he's not as good as Tolstoy. As good as Dumas? No. Hugo? Let's call it a tie. What about other Brits? Well, he's not even close to George Eliot. He's about as good as Thomas Hardy.

He has a better feel for what it's like to be poor than most of those authors, and that's a big plus for him; even if you don't like poor people, Dickens' willingness to dive into the alleys makes a nice change from all those Victorian parlors. His characters are often caricatures, but they're effective, memorable ones. His understanding of human nature comes with sharp sarcasm and a bottomless supply of sympathy. He loves underdogs. He doesn't love Jews. He appears to have some weird ideas about women - see Betsey Trotwood and of course Miss Havisham.

His main characters often disappear - never more than in David Copperfield, where many characters can't be bothered to remember the protagonist's name if they remember him at all. DC is variously called Trot, Daisy, and - by his own awful wife - Doadie. His supporting characters are better, and his villains are best. Uriah Heep basically walks away with David Copperfield.

His plots rely heavily on the kind of coincidence peculiar to 19th century writers, and they're usually telegraphed a mile away, which doesn't keep them from being enormously entertaining and satisfying. He has a tendency to go on about legal bullshit to a fairly eye-glazing degree.

His prose is generally unpretentious and effective, with brief spurts of incredible skill and beauty. He likes describing weather, as in the of Bleak House. That and the dizzying opening of Tale of Two Cities ("It was the best of times..." and then it goes on for, like, ever) are audacious stuff.

He's badly sentimental. You've probably heard the quote from Oscar Wilde, "One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of [character from different book] without dissolving into tears of laughter." It's best to just skim passages involving death or love; they're unsalvageably corny.

He's a very good author. David Copperfield is a very good book, but it reads as practice for Great Expectations, which deals with a similar plot and themes better and much more concisely. Great Expectations is the best Dickens I've read. This is good, and Dickens is quite good. I find myself not needing to think about him all that often.

Appendix: Dickens' influences
If you're interested: at one point David Copperfield reels off a list of his favorite literary characters. Here are the books he's referring to:
- Adventures of Roderick Random (1748), Tobias Smollett
- Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), Tobias Smollett
- Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), Tobias Smollett (Chuck liked Smollett, huh? This one is supposed to be his best.)
- Tom Jones, Henry Fielding (1749)
- Vicar of Wakefield (1762), Oliver Goldsmith
- Gil Blas, Alain-Ren茅 Lesage (1715 - 1735), "the last masterpiece of the picaresque genre"
- Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe (1719)