A Tale of Two Cities is well-known to be Dickens for People Who Don’t Like Dickens. The question, then, is whether it is also Dickens for People Who Like Dickens. I think the answer is yes.
So, what is it that People Who Don’t Like Dickens dislike about Dickens? I would guess it’s some combination of the following: unbelievably long books, far too many characters to keep track of, grotesque caricatures, lengthy descriptive bits, convoluted plots, dated social-justice harangues and Dickens’ writerly voice. Am I missing any? Oh, there are the dull and wholesome juvenile leads. Now, Two Cities is short (ish, for a Dickens novel, anyway); there are a lot of characters but not an insane number of characters; the grotesque caricatures are toned down a trifle, and really are restricted to the French; the social-justice harangues are dated, but then it’s a historical novel so the effect is different; and the plot is not particularly complicated or difficult to track. Sure, the voice is there (one reader told me that she stopped reading Dickens because he was always there in every book, a huge part of it, and she was sick of him), and the juvenile leads are dull in themselves, but we don’t spend that much time with them.
On the other hand, what do People Who Like Dickens like about Dickens? For YHBm primarily it’s the voice, and then the grotesques, and the incredibly vivid images. Those are all in the book, although as I mentioned, the grotesques are more muted than in some other books. And, in fact, I think Dickens-lovers like the characters, both the grotesques and the not-quite-grotesques. Mr. Lorry, for instance, is no grotesque, but he is every inch a Dickens character. Sydney Carton. Jerry. Mr. Stryver. The mender of roads. And, muted or not, Jacques and Madame Defarge are magnificent creations, fully satisfying even if they are no Squeers or Dedlock. And the images—Madame Defarge, knitting, of course, and the old Doctor making shoes, and the spilt wine in the Saint Antione, and Jerry Cruncher robbing graves with his son watching from the shadows. And the words—recalled to life, good day Jacques, One Hundred and Five North Tower, a man of business, I grieve to inform the society—in secret, a far far better rest.
I’ve never been treated to Benjamin Rosenbaum’s full Theory of Sources of Reader Pleasure, which has to do with ... well, at some point he’ll write it up and I’ll disagree with it then. But when it came up in conversation recently, I pointed out the necessary and corollary Theory of Sources of Reader Annoyance. Which is just to lead in to my claim that for every reader there are some things that just get right up his nose. It might be explicit sex, or it might be political commentary, or it might be lame dialogue, or it might be dialect spelling. That doesn’t necessarily mean that A. Reader will hate every book that has one of those things; he might get enough pleasure from other aspects of the book to make up for the annoying bit.
Now, with Dickens, I think the disagreement between People Who Don’t Like Dickens and People Who Like Dickens on the subject of Dickens is not entirely that the same things that delight the latter annoy the former. There are also things that annoy the former group that the latter group is indifferent to, or that annoy them only very mildly. There are also things that the latter group adore that the former group don’t mind, or object to only in quantity. So someone who doesn’t really like Dicken’s voice might well be willing to put up with it in a short book with lots of other good stuff, and such a person might well enjoy such a book, even while skimming bits that I stop and read aloud. Different people like different things. There’s enough there for everyone.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.