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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