"What the Dickens"....NOT HIM too?????

[JennyWren]

Sorry...there is no good...or otherwise....can come of this post...I am purely venting.

So today is some marvelous anniversary of something about Charles Dickens....I have no clue what...because my jaw has been dropping further and further listening to his life story on various radio programs...until I frankly couldn`t give a Dickens if it is the 200th Anniversary of when his end-of-the-world prediction is set to come true.

So....his Great Great Great (or something) Grandaughter has got herself busy being the Big Authority...and IN BROAD DAYLIGHT OUT OF THE RADIO IN MY KITCHEN...she merrily announces that our Charlie Boy "Had a Mid-life Crisis"....and was "A bit nasty" to his wife...and in fact "was never very nice" after that!!!!!!!

"BUT I ADORE DICKENS` BOOKS. Oh...not a screaming N"....I am thinking. So I have a little google around to put my mind at ease...and find such choice phrases as from his daughter Katey ""This affair brought out all that was worst--all that was weakest in him. He did not care a damn what happened to any of us."

He also apparently put it about that his wife was "unstable".

Any of this sounding familiar? Well...the more I looked...the more I saw how the little bazturd created such evil gits in his stories. Plus all the splitting business is everywhere....Oh-so-goody-goody characters...with nasty scum-of-the-earth through-and-through shites.

Oh deary dear. I shall never look at Bill Sykes quite the same.

[Never again]

Oh dear, sorry Jenny. And another hero bites the dust.

I have to say I feel quite vindicated myself though, as I, who used to happily read the cornflake packet for entertainment, never really could stomach Dickens.

[JennyWren]

Well.....the Cornflake packet IS sounding inviting.

It`s one thing to read the descriptions of snivelling-human-waste characters so deliciously described and imagine them to be caricatures cooked up from a vivid imagination. It`s quite another when the sneaking suspicion shuffles up that...in fact....the author might very well identify rather too closely with the motivations of the darkest villain.

I know Dickens isn`t everyone`s idea of a good read. But his superhero Special Skill (in my opinion) is his observational detail in his descriptions. Fits RIGHT in doesn`t it....with the snivelling little N trait of watching....observing....examining the prey....NORMAL HUMANS.

Aaaaargh. I am off to find out about Thiamine and Riboflavin and Niacin instead. And Daily Recommended Amounts of Saturated Fat.....And don`t tell me Mr Kellogg is a P. And originally called CocoPops  "PsychoPops". Or....CrunchyNut ClusterBs.

I am guessing UK cereal names are not going to be Universal...so...with much sadness...I will quit this rich vein of terrible puns.

[Rosemary]

Oh !!!!!Jenny  Dickens was  my NH favourite Author       He had the whole collection on the bookshelf ,and read   them   again   and again   and again .
Now i   know why       It all fits together now .I cant stand the horrible  stories myself  .     

[tango3]

I hated Dickens - never could read anything he wrote.  Now I know why!!!!!!!

[JennyWren]

I had no idea. I used to think of his stories as fantastical fiction...almost pantomime-like with their villains you love-to-hate.

I thought he was such a clever guy to conjure up such unimaginably disgusting rogues...tormenting such utterly innocent heroes and heroines....and meeting unfortunate ends.

Now I just want to shove all four million volumes of his works right up his plum pudding duct.

I see everyone else hates his stories already. But I rather enjoyed them. Well...not ALL of them...not the dark dreary ones that go on and on until you wonder if you`re still alive. I like the ones where the "goodies" win through.

But then of course..he surely counted himself amongst the goodies.

Oh well...that`s thoroughly dissed the Dickens.

I wonder who will be next? Mother Theresa?

[Freezer Burned]

But then of course..he surely counted himself amongst the goodies.

Of course it would appear that way coming from his gaslight powered projector.

Or was it even more twisted than that? Was he knowingly confessing what he would do if he could get away with it? And laughing up his sleeve at the people who loved his tales of horror just because there was moral and a happy ending?

Like there aren't enough gruesome morality tales in the Bible to last anyone a lifetime.

[JennyWren]

The thing that is really icky to me is that so often in Dickens` stories...the poor good guy/gal gets a right pasting. Ends up dead. Penniless. Beaten. Broken hearted.

I USED to think that he bravely avoided sentimentality. Now he is giving me the creeps.

[Julia]

Jenny, Well you do have Roald Dahl, who puts at least one N in every story and then lets the children destroy them. He clearly writes from personal experience, (lots of charming wicked people), and I do not think he ended up an N.  On the other hand Oscar Wilde was a flaming N, but he's Irish. Certainly there are a lot of Ns on both sides of the pond. Sad to hear you wont be enjoying your classics though.

Julia

[JennyWren]

I seem to have a creeping recollection that Mr Dahl has rather a reputation as a womanising bully! I could be wrong....but I have a feeling he was a secret agent of some kind during the war....and did things to make James Bond blush.

But Dahl`s loopy stories....as you say...are fabulous in their inevitable sticky endings for the ghastly freaks he invented. I adore his style.

[alatariel]

Roald Dahl's stories have always fascinated me, but I always thought Dickens was boring.  Could never get past the first couple pages.

[MoreMyself]

Never liked Dickens.  Too black and white and I always thought what he wrote was pulp fiction for his era.  Why has it survived?  He does paint characters in exquisite detail, I'll hand him that.  Mostly I think people don't read him so much as watch the movies and television series made from his books, because many of them are very good in portraying the dark and dreary world that Dickens created (with of course the mandatory 'good wins out' at the end).  I always kept quiet about not liking Dickens because he had such a resurgent popularity in the last couple of decades. Now I can say "Dickens, blah, another N!"

Of course this could lead into a whole other topic.  Does success in and of itself contribute to a specific kind of narcissism?  In some people where there are latent but manageable N traits, when they achieve and become used to being told they are great and wonderful, does this fertilise that narcissism so that they believe their own press?  Is their a detonation button on certain narcissistic types when they arrive at mid-life? 

[JennyWren]

I have to stomp my foot here!....in lonely indignation!

Dickens descriptive writing is second to none. Honest! The guy had an astute detail of eye that is breathtaking. Sure....he`s not an easy read. Very tempting to bail out after the first paragraph....but persevere with Great Expectations....or Bleak House....and you are right there with him. You are willing on the poor innocents as they are tossed and turned in the stormy path he sends them down.

I have never seen a single TV adaptation....or film that has not mangled and smashed the themes and subplots like a boot on a dry twig. The latest BBC adaptation of Great Expectations had me wanting to throw the TV on the fire over Christmas. Half the characters were missing...and the main ones so badly cast....they might as well cast a stick of celery and a frog in the leading roles.

OK then....TV critiques aside....and my personal devotion to Dickens abilities forgotten for a tick.....with the revelations that he is Dickens with a capital DICK....

Of course this could lead into a whole other topic.  Does success in and of itself contribute to a specific kind of narcissism?  In some people where there are latent but manageable N traits, when they achieve and become used to being told they are great and wonderful, does this fertilise that narcissism so that they believe their own press?  Is their a detonation button on certain narcissistic types when they arrive at mid-life? 

I think success could conceivably encourage the arrogance bucket to overflow dangerously. I don`t know if that was Dickens trouble. But it can`t be healthy for ANYBODY to be in a position where all are worshipping your every word.

An N-ish type will behave very differently if they are NEVER criticised. If they have a source of never-ending supply.

[Legs]

<<Roald Dahl's stories have always fascinated me>>

I love some off his stuff.if you like him, Ala....have you ever read Thorne Smith? He wrote the Topper stories, but also a bunch of really racy and hilarious books, I think mostly set in the 20's and early 30's. I have never googled him, but I have all the books he ever wrote and have read them to shreds.


Legs

[alatariel]

No, I haven't Legs, but I'm off to google!

[Legs]

I found this about Thorne Smith:

http://amsaw.org/amsaw-ithappenedinhistory-032705-smith.html


A tragic but somewhat wonderful life....


Legs

[too_many]

Jenny - I'm a fan of Dickens too - at least once I got to David Copperfield (didn't care for Oliver Twist, hated Hard Times, had no pulse the entire way through A Tale of Two Cities, and then gave him one last try), and I've thought of his personal conduct often as this anniversary approaches. Because I want to be a writer, it does disturb me to no end how many of them seem to have been or are awful people, and I've been asking myself if their art can be viewed separately from their personality - I don't know... For me, if I learn too much about them, it does sour me on their work, or at least throws a wrench into my enjoyment of it - especially when I have found their work especially humane. Because there are also plenty of writers who I wouldn't exactly expect much humanity from...

I certainly could never imagine your BB writing a convincing human character of any depth, especially a female one, that is for sure! My dad wouldn't be able to do it either, so it's upsetting that the ability to can't be the marker of a trustworthy person...   

[JennyWren]

There you have it too_many. That`s absolutely exactly whats got my head in a spin.

I knew nothing of Dickens later life...and rather only rough sketches of his dislike of Victorian cruelty and injustice...which I thought rather noble. And so I had an impression as I read his books of a fiercely idealistic moral man. It is easy to stomach an evil souless worthless hound like Bill Sykes (I detest Oliver Twist anyway) if you think he has been conjured up by the imagination of a good writer to exemplify all that is vile. He takes on a more sinister and unbearable countenance if I think for one moment Dickens was creating snivelling duplicitous asses because he identified with them.

HOWEVER....thinking on MoreMyself`s extension activity (!)....

 

Does success in and of itself contribute to a specific kind of narcissism?  In some people where there are latent but manageable N traits, when they achieve and become used to being told they are great and wonderful, does this fertilise that narcissism so that they believe their own press?  Is their a detonation button on certain narcissistic types when they arrive at mid-life? 

...maybe Dickens did tip into Nism as a result of unmitigated success.

As you say too_many...an N writing the depth of character...complete with authentic behaviour...does not seem to fall within the capabilities of an N. BigBird can hardly write a coherent sentence...let alone use words like a paintbrush as Dickens does. BigBird uses words as a sledge hammer....or more likely THUMBSCREWS. And I know that an "unusual" perception of language has been very common amongst Ns when discussed here in the past.

Maybe Dickens was not a pathological N-from-birth...but rather a Born-Again moron who became Nish in the extreme with a head full of fan mail and critical acclaim.

It`s a thought.

I think fame is not great for the psyche generally. But I can think of many writers who have stayed very much human as well. But I know what you mean....when reading a book....maybe it is better for enjoyment`s sake...not to know too much about the author....or at least detach that knowledge from reading the book. It can colour things in a very disorientating way.

Additionally...it strikes me...that extreme creativity is often a hair`s breadth from madness. I have in mind Artists and Inventors and such. A mind running THAT freely...might easily run off the rails I suppose.

[Dandelion]

I never really "got" Dickens - so I am just glad I am not alone!
I saw it as emotional porn of his day, I just never dared say it out loud because eeeeeeverybody loooooves Dickens! Hehe

[JennyWren]

Wow....everyone sure hates him here already!  Thank heavens for  too_many. The WoN Dickens Appreciation Club is, however, remarkably numerically challenged.

I`m gonna start quoting him in a minute. Then you`ll be sorry. Or asleep.

[MoreMyself]

Go ahead Jenny, quote away.  That's what that big blue button with the arrow on it is for on my browser.  (Go back!  Escape at all costs!)

I was thinking Tolstoy as an example of someone with a major mid life crisis.  Apparently his loyal and loving wife worked hard all her life to support his writing career and acted as a wife, mother and secretary.  Then he hit mid life and had the equivalent of today's conversion to new age thinking.  He wanted to help the masses, or poverty or some such thing and apparently this entailed him leaving said wife and family to go off and live life exactly as he wanted.  Now some people might see that as heroic, but I think he was just a narcissistic jerk.  Sort of like some of the N's that have been cited on this forum for taking up Buddhism, or Taoism or Whateverism and becoming quite high and mighty about it in midlife.  Off they go to bathe nude in some religious river somewhere and survive by enhaling the smell of frangipani, etc.  What it really is, is running away.  And I don't like it.  People are communal creatures.  Family centred.  If you're not, then know yourself and stay dreaming and drifting on your own, as I tell my musician son.  Don't start a family and then decide it doesn't suit. 

Oh, I'm way off topic.

[JennyWren]

“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Whoosh !!!!....there goes MoreMyself faster than Usain Bolt.

Sorry  Couldn`t resist.

[JennyWren]

So...posts post themselves now apparently on my laptop. I hadn`t finished Thank you very much! Flippin` technology eh? Tolstoy never had to bother himself with misbehaving software. Ooooer. I could have put THAT better. 


What I wanted to say..before the electrons conspired against me...was in response to this...

  Sort of like some of the N's that have been cited on this forum for taking up Buddhism, or Taoism or Whateverism and becoming quite high and mighty about it in midlife.  Off they go to bathe nude in some religious river somewhere and survive by enhaling the smell of frangipani, etc.  What it really is, is running away.  And I don't like it.  People are communal creatures.  Family centred.  If you're not, then know yourself and stay dreaming and drifting on your own, as I tell my musician son.  Don't start a family and then decide it doesn't suit. 

Oh, I'm way off topic.

When are any of us ACTUALLY ON topic? 

But this is very true....Ns in the natural order of things are more suited to living a dreamy drifty life with no commitments. But that would be honest....and openly empty. And no N can sanction being on their own. Or honest.

They really are THE END aren`t they. No way round them. Nothing but duplicitous damaging leeches.

[alatariel]

Spot-on!  No N can exist in a vacuum, for Nature abhors a vacuum.  How are you going to perform to your iNauthentic best if you don't have an audieNce?

[Liftedup]

Sorry...there is no good...or otherwise....can come of this post...I am purely venting.

So today is some marvelous anniversary of something about Charles Dickens....I have no clue what...because my jaw has been dropping further and further listening to his life story on various radio programs...until I frankly couldn`t give a Dickens if it is the 200th Anniversary of when his end-of-the-world prediction is set to come true.

So....his Great Great Great (or something) Grandaughter has got herself busy being the Big Authority...and IN BROAD DAYLIGHT OUT OF THE RADIO IN MY KITCHEN...she merrily announces that our Charlie Boy "Had a Mid-life Crisis"....and was "A bit nasty" to his wife...and in fact "was never very nice" after that!!!!!!!

"BUT I ADORE DICKENS` BOOKS. Oh...not a screaming N"....I am thinking. So I have a little google around to put my mind at ease...and find such choice phrases as from his daughter Katey ""This affair brought out all that was worst--all that was weakest in him. He did not care a damn what happened to any of us."

He also apparently put it about that his wife was "unstable".

Any of this sounding familiar? Well...the more I looked...the more I saw how the little bazturd created such evil gits in his stories. Plus all the splitting business is everywhere....Oh-so-goody-goody characters...with nasty scum-of-the-earth through-and-through shites.

Oh deary dear. I shall never look at Bill Sykes quite the same.

Yeah I was disappointed when I found this out too.

He cheated on her, and treated her like dirt. She had all these babies with him too. Course there was no birth control as widespread back then.