Thursday, January 21, 2021

American Notes for General Circulation

So here's my beef with Dickens: he can be amusing, but I'm far too impatient for the payoff. I struggled mightily through the first 25 pages of this:

"About midnight we shipped a sea, which forced its way through the skylights, burst open the doors above, and came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch lady - who, by the way, had previously sent a message to the captain by the stewardess, requesting him, with her compliments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the top of every mast, and to the chimney, in order that the ship might not be struck by lightning." (p. 22)

That is one single sentence! The crux of which I can't even tell you. By the time I've typed the last word, I've forgotten the point. For nights descriptions such as this put me archly to sleep. And then I had a brilliant idea: skip ahead, skip ahead. Surely the story would be improved once Mr. Dickens arrived in America.

I skip ahead to find him safely arrived in Boston, his ship sea-ed or sea shipped or whatever other nautical means of arrival there may have been:

"In all of them, the unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the State are carefully instructed in their duties both to God and man; are surrounded by all reasonable means of comfort and happiness that their condition will admit of; are appealed to, as members of the great human family, however afflicted, indigent, or fallen; are ruled by the strong Heart, and not by the strong (though immeasurably weaker) Hand." (p. 63)

The sentences before and after are no clearer to me. I am remembering now as I read this, why the Wreck of the Golden Mary was such a revelation: I think it's the only Dickens I enjoyed enough to read more than once. Still, I'm nothing if not a glutton for punishment, so I decide to seek out the chapters that find Dickens in the South, where he was, if my memory served me, most appalled.

"Then, in order as the eye descends towards the water, are the sides, and doors, and windows of the state-rooms, jumbled as oddly together as though they formed a small street, built by the varying tastes of a dozen men: the whole is supported on beams and pillars resting on a dirty barge, but a few inches above the water's edge: and in the narrow space between this upper structure and this barge's deck, are the furnace fires and machinery, open at the sides to every wind that blows, and every storm of rain it drives along its path."

Uncle, uncle, uncle! Isn't there a rule against using more than one colon in a sentence? And sweet mother of God, the sentence that follows the above monstrosity is even longer:

"Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood: the machinery, not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, who throng the lower deck; under the management, too, of reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of six months' standing: one feels directly that the wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that the journey should be safely made." (p. 175)

I could go on. The passages on 188 and 189 are even longer - once I gave up on following the story and focused instead on the sentence structure, I found my interest waxed, though I couldn't tell you what I was reading...and then I remember: life's too short to read lousy books.

In conclusion, if this is your bedtime reading, you're a better student of literature than I.

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