So my friend Melissa gave me a copy of A Tale of Two Cities for my birthday, after being horrified to learn that I had never read any Dickens. I was not avoiding him on purpose, I just never got around to it. But since I had the book and a break from school at the same time, I decided to read it.
For most of this book I was really confused about the strong feelings people have about Dickens. I have heard both that he’s one of the greatest authors ever, and that he’s one of the most painful authors to read ever. I have heard complaints about his wordiness and unnecessarily long descriptions. I found none of this to be true for the first 350 pages in a 367 page book. He does describe scenes and people in detail, but aside from the occasional intentional repetition, he is no worse in this regard than any other classic authors of his time. I would argue that Hugo is a great deal more wordy than Dickens, as is Sir Walter Scott, and E.M. Forster. Dickens cannot hope to compete in a wordiness competition with Herman Melville or the great Henry James. So this complaint I see as a function of Dickens being read to the exclusion of his contemporaries, which is a sad state of affairs indeed. For those first 350 pages, I also did not find Dickens to be more brilliant than any of the above mentioned authors, and lacked in several regards. His characters are rather flat, to be honest. They are inspiring and obviously spring from a brilliant mind, but they are not dynamic or believable. For example, Lucie, while she is elegantly painted, has no faults. Also, aside from the help she lends her father, she serves no function in the story other than as a sentimental motivational fixture. She pales in comparison to Fantine or Epenine of Les Miserables. The plot was interesting, although it dragged at times, and I really think I would have grown bored with the thing if it hadn’t been for the excellent descriptions. However, all of this mediocre reviewing ended abruptly at the last few scenes, which are a literary creation more beautiful and moving than just about anything I’ve ever read. I’m putting in on the list with the epilogue in Hunchback and the intro in Swann’s Way. It was phenomenal, and worth every minute I spent reading the book to that point. With this in mind, I heartily recommend this book to anyone who can appreciate delayed gratification, since you cannot really appreciate the end unless you’ve read the book before it. It is a sight to see.
Departing from my review of the book, it made me think of something I think God told me about my own writing. He said that I should write about the beauty of the sun reflected on dark waters. That if I try to write about the sun itself, I will blind my reader and they will go away empty. If I try to write about the dark waters alone, I will drown my reader and they will go away heavily burdened. But the only way that the reader can appreciate the depths of the waters and the light of the sun is to write about the reflection. I think that’s what Dickens did with this novel, and it was beautiful. I think to be able to appreciate the beauty of that though, you have to be willing to get through the darkness, which so many readers are not willing to do anymore. It takes patience, a willingness to read through several pages that you do not enjoy in order to understand the beauty that can play off of that. I don’t know if there is hope for professional success for that kind of writing in todays markets, but I will write it anyway. Maybe someone will read it after I’m dead, maybe someone will seize on it and I’ll come to great fame and fortune, or maybe it will sink into a drawer or get lost on an old laptop and never be appreciated at all. But I will be satisfied when I stand before my maker that I used the talent and calling he gave me to the best of my ability. That’s what I set my eyes to today.
Geez, I’m kind of wordy myself, aren’t I?