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OMF, Book 1 Chp. 01-04
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Tristram
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Jun 08, 2017 02:20AM
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Tristram wrote: "Hmm, spontaneously I'd say that Pickwick Papers might have the most characters, since it is episodic and quite long."I keep forgetting about Pickwick, which seems to set a lot of records for various things.
John wrote: "is there a particular novel that is populated with the most characters, by far, or even close? And if so, is it OMF? "That's an interesting question, John. I don't know the answer, and don't have time to try to figure it out right now. Someone motivated could probably add them up using David Perdue's Charles Dickens page, which is a fantastic resource - if you haven't spent some time there, I highly recommend it! Below is a link to his characters page. But back to your original comment - if you haven't read a lot of Dickens, you'll find his books very well-populated. In fact, what makes DIckens my favorite author are the many characters, their quirks, and their interactions with one another.
http://charlesdickenspage.com/charact...
Mary Lou wrote: "John wrote: "is there a particular novel that is populated with the most characters, by far, or even close? And if so, is it OMF? "That's an interesting question, John. I don't know the answer, a..."
Thank you for that link. In just an initial look, that is an excellent page that I need to go through more thoroughly. I have bookmarked it.
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Part of the fun for me the first time I read OMF was wondering how on earth Dickens was going to merge Gaffer Hexam and the Veneerings into the same book. Is it possible to imagine two sets of characters so far apart in every way?
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An individual, or an object? It's not clear for quite some time!
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And much more successful then than now. They seemingly recycled almost everything; we are lucky to recycle 10% of our refuse.
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And much more successful then than now. They seemingly recycled..."
That's true, but they had a very cogent motive for it: the need to make a living out of other people's refuse. Our reasons for recycling are unsurpassable - the need to economize on ressources and to make them last as long as possible - but man often acts on more immediate impulses and coercions - alas!
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Part of the fun for me the first time I read OMF was wondering how on earth Dickens was goi..."
I know what you mean - Dickens's deft hand at establishing links between his sets of characters. The first link he established between the Veneerings and the Hexams is Charley's admiration for the Veneering library. Probably Charley is the only person ever to have taken a closer look at any of the books, even though he could only look at the bindings.
Another link I noticed was the one between Wilfer and the Veneerings - since he is one of their clerks.
The Veneerings and the Hexams will probably only be linked in that Mortimer will keep future dinner parties on tabs with the "Man from Somewhere" and his story.
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Oh, I suspect Dickens will do more than that. Just purely speculating, but will the Veneerings "take on" Charley as, I'm terrible with names and don't have time to look them up but you'll know who I mean, the couple with the unruly pony took on the boy who came back to hold it for them?
We already have another upper/lower class link with the Veneerings in R. Wilfer being a clerk in the house of Chicksey, Veneering, and Stobbles. So the Veneerings are already more central to the story than just as hosts of the Mortimer story.
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That is an interesting statistic. Thanks for the info.
John wrote: "LindaH, I have to look for other clues in the writing so I can figure out that what they pulled up was a body. I thought maybe I missed a few words where that could be clear. But the line you quote..."I like your observation about 'clues in the writing' - this is a bit of a mystery isn't it? There are so many details that you can see why it would be helpful to re-read each section (perhaps, given the nature of the story, even more so than some of Dicken's other novels? Hard to tell just yet). The way that Dickens layers on people and particular nuances of each one in each scene is intricate - and underscores why it is helpful to have this group combing through everything!
Tristram wrote: "Okay then, let's have the other three Chapters for this week:The second Chapter, „The Man from Somewhere“, starts on a completely different note, namely a clearly satirical one. We are introduced..."
so was it the case then, that unlike (probably) 'trash men' of today, that a 'dust man' would be well respected and eligible to be part of higher society?
Hilary wrote: "Tristram and Ami, the fork as an implement for hairdressing grossed me out. Why a fork? Were the prongs used as a comb? This is certainly quite grotesque."it's still classier than Eustacia's walking by a shrub to comb out her hair in Return of the Native !
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The second Chapter, „The Man from Somewhere“, starts on a completely different note, namely a clearly satirical one. ..."
Hi Dianne
In Lee Jackson's Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth there is a fair bit on dustmen. The most successful of London's 19C dustmen was wealthier than Dickens. He was, of course, the exception. For the majority of people it was a dirty and rather revolting job that paid very little.
I don't know if people have tried this here, but I'm wondering if listening to Dickens is better for me?I sat back, propped up my Nook, and went to OMF on youtube, and listened to the first chapter beautifully narrated (female voice).
I felt like I absorbed Dickens. Though I don't know if it was because I had already read the chapter, or that perhaps this is the way for me to better absorb Dickens?
I had everything else off in the house. The only sound was the narrator's voice and my own breathing.
It was quite good.
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I am reading OMF (Everyman edition, with original illustrations) in my reading chair, but at night I listen to about 15 minutes of it on audio as I settle in for sleep. (I used to read in bed, but my back can't take it any more, so now I "read" audiobooks in bed.)
I'm finding that there is a major difference between the book and the audio. In the book, I have a better sense of the plot line and action, because I can more more quickly through description and into the action. But on MP3, because every word gets full attention, I get much more of the sense of the environment and the interplay between characters.
Best of both worlds. And best of all is that my library lets me download audio books, and when I put them on an MP3 player they don't expire, so I can listen for more than the two week loan period, which is necessary for Dickens!
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Of course. I think most of us can. But if you're a normal reader, you don't read every word. And that's where listening comes in; no skimming, no skipping, you get it all.
I have always preferred reading to audiobooks, but with Dickens, perhaps listening works better.
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Of course. I think most of us can. But if you're a normal reader, you don't read every word. And that's whe..."
True. All those names, the generation after generation type in the Old Testament goes by me pretty fast. It is interesting in listening to the poor narrator trying to read them all. I guess he got them right, I have no idea.
Kim wrote: "Everyman wrote: "Kim wrote: "... I didn't listen long because I could read it so much faster myself. :-)"Of course. I think most of us can. But if you're a normal reader, you don't read every wor..."
Over the years, most of my listening has been when I am driving. Golf instruction books and poetry and biographies. I know that Dickens in the car would not work for me, perhaps other authors as well.
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I also used to listen to audio books at home - just like you, John, with nothing else in between, just sitting there, listening, smoking a pipe from time to time - and my most wonderful listening experience was Heart of Darkness, which happens to be one of my favourite books. Listening to books reminds me of the time when I was a kid and my grandmother used to read books to me - she had a monotonous way of doing so, but she was my grandmother, and I liked it to sit on the sofa next to her, eating sliced apples and listening.
The magic of words is conjured up best by audio books - or by reading a book aloud, which I often do. I said that before, I think, but I always tell my students that they can know good literature from bad literature by reading it aloud. If they get bored, then it's bad literature. It may be suspenseful, but the language is a-dime-a-dozen, for otherwise they'd enjoy listening to the words instead of just following the story.
Tristram wrote: "I used to listen to audio books when I was driving, and I have quite some driving to do. But I only listened to stuff like Dan Brown because had I been listening to Dickens or Conrad, I would no lo..."Tristram, I have to add, in terms of my technological savvy, or more aptly my lack of it, that it was nice to find another use for my Nook. Just propped it up, lied back, and listened.
Hi Dianne, I haven't read 'Return of the Native' yet but intend to, as indeed I plan to read all Hardy. If I understand you correctly I think you're referring to branches of a shrub minus foodstuff. The thing that what really makes me cringe is that when I picture a fork I see bits of food residue sticking to the prongs. Eugh!!
John, I like the picture you paint of the audio and your breathing. So restful ...
Hilary wrote: "John, I like the picture you paint of the audio and your breathing. So restful ..."Thank you Hilary. I will add that when one of my three cats decides to curl up and listen, too, then all the pieces are in place for an OMF chapter.
Hilary wrote: "Tristram and Ami, the fork as an implement for hairdressing grossed me out. Why a fork? Were the prongs used as a comb? This is certainly quite grotesque."It actually says she was using the handle of a fork. Which is still grotesque, and probably not as effective as using the prongs!
Thanks for all the great intros, comments and illustrations! It's so good to be back in the mix ... but I do need to catch up without rushing, if you see what I mean.I was aware, reading this section, that it may well be the most grotesque beginning so far. Very dark! I'm wondering anyone knows if this is perhaps that he was influenced by his friend Edgar Allan Poe, with all that slime and ooze in the river Thames, and the dead and decaying bodies! I'm watching a cosy mystery on TV intermittently and it struck me how much grimmer and more morbid Dickens is in this novel!
Of course he was in the early stages of his final illness. So perhaps he gauged the balance badly to start with, and that's why it didn't sell very well. I think his fans might have liked his amusing cameos more! But then we did get a few in chapter 4, with the numerous Wilfers! How that coquette Belle reminded me of Mercy Pecksniff. The martyred mother reminds me of several Dickens females ... And the Veneerings - what a fabulous name - just like Miss Prism, the Dorrit girls' governess, with her insistence on "polish".
Altogether there is a wealth of detail in the first four chapters. Like Pamela, I had thought that I'd read this, but it has a lot of episodes where the descriptions and metaphorical characters, such as Tremlow, are new to me. I have a facsimile of the first edition - bought years ago from a shop in Hay-on-Wye (famous for antiquarian bookshops) called "Boz" :) I looked at an original, and some of the original magazines in a box file, but they were all a bit pricey so I just bought the facsimile.
Oh Everyman, yes the Gutenberg edition does have the Marcus Stone illustrations. I like them and find them very atmospheric, but I also like some of the other more caricatured ones you've found for us Kim. I think, for me, it depends on the mood of the chapter Dickens has written.
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I was aware, reading this sec..."
Hi Jean
Welcome back to the last, and, I agree, the most unusual of the Dickens novels we have read together. You mention how some of the characters resonate with others in earlier novels. I've been thinking that too.
I look forward to your comments as you catch up to us. We aren't far really. Just head to the Jolly Fellowship Porters.
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It's good to have you and your insightful comments back! I couldn't put my finger to it but I had a certain feeling about Bella Wilfer, and now that you mentioned how much she reminded you of Mercy Pecksniff, it finally made click in my mind somewhere, and I suddenly realized what I'd been thinking. You are right, I think, there are certain similarities between Bella and Mercy. Let's see whether Bella will also undergo a painful process of moral cleansing, like Mercy did!
I hope so - she's unbearable at the moment! ;) Oh not that I would wish Mercy's fate on her though - now I remember ...
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Jean wrote: "How that coquette Belle reminded me of Mercy Pecksniff."Good observation, Jean. I hadn't made that connection. The Pecksniff sisters and the Wilfer sisters are very much like my two daughters -- lots of bickering!
And similarly indulgent fathers - in Dickens, I hasten to add! ;)
Jean wrote: "And similarly indulgent fathers - in Dickens, I hasten to add! ;)"To date, my husband has not allowed either of our daughters to comb his hair with a fork!
Kathleen wrote: "Lizzie's father mentions he found her in a basket on the water as well when she was a baby. A very quick line ..."Quick, indeed - I didn't remember it. If it registered at the time, it was quickly forgotten. I wonder, then, if Charlie is biologically related to either of them, or if he, too, was "found". Good catch, Kathleen.
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Kathleen, thanks for the information on the Mudlarks and the Toshers. I did not know about the Toshers and think that their way of eking out a living must even have been harder than that of the Mudlarks, what with the stench, the rats and the ... waste. Probably, the Mudlarks were not a lot better off, though, as the first part of the name of their occupation suggests.
As to the basket, I am not so sure whether Lizzie was really found in a basket. The actual passage reads:
"‘How can you be so thankless to your best friend, Lizzie? The very fire that warmed you when you were a babby, was picked out of the river alongside the coal barges. The very basket that you slept in, the tide washed ashore. The very rockers that I put it upon to make a cradle of it, I cut out of a piece of wood that drifted from some ship or another.’"
I read it as implying that Hexam found a basket washed ashore by the tide, picked it up and used it as a sleeping-bag for his biological daughter - just like he used the driftwood to build a cradle. The sentence "The very basket ..." can be read in two ways, but I think that in the context it rather says that the basket, like all the other things Hexam used to shelter his daughter, were "gifts" from the river.
Tristram wrote: "Kathleen wrote: "While I was reading OMF for the second time, I was curious about chapter one and the scene in the water and what kind of profession The Gaffer, his daughter, and the other man in t..."Thanks for looking it up, Tristram. I remember that passage, now that you've found it and, like Jean, at the time I thought of Moses, too. But it does seem as if it was the basket that was found, and not Lizzie herself.
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But I don't recall any mention at all of Lizzie's mother.
Hmm. Makes me wonder, this being Dickens, whether she will emerge suddenly in the middle of the book. Or will it be revealed, a la Bleak House, that Mrs. Boffin was her natural mother?
Everyman wrote: "Or will it be revealed, a la Bleak House, that Mrs. Boffin was her natural mother? ..."Or maybe she's Georgiana's long lost twin! (No spoilers - just making a joke. Or am I?....) :-)
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Well from what we've learned of Thames at that time, the "spume" would be most unsavoury and mostly arising from rotting corpses and rubbish, raw sewage and the like!Come to think of it, this would make a great literary conundrum for one of John Sutherland's series of books. I have three of them, so must check for "Who was Lizzie Hexam's mother? Maybe he's thought of several other alternatives! :)
Great to read all through this thread after reading the first 4 chapters. I love late, dark Dickens (Edwin Drood might just be my favourite!), so the opening here pulls me in right away. Then the Veneering dinner party is so jarringly bright by comparison, with all those gleaming surfaces.It's fascinating to compare the illustrations posted in this thread - I know the Marcus Stone ones, but the others are new to me. The Sol Eytinge Jr drawings are striking, especially the one with Lizzie getting out of the boat.
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All in all, I think Stone is both serious and somewhat original in most of his illustrations whereas other illustrators seem a bit run-of-the-mill to me. Eytinge, however, is special, as can be seen in the illustration you referred to, Judy. One might imagine Lizzie a romantic heroine, for whatever reason, but Eytinge fills her eyes with the horror and revulsion she might experience when she accompanies her father on his ghoulish business travels.
That's just how her expression looks, Tristram, I agree. I also like the way that Eytinge seems to draw on the Stone illustration of this chapter, with his version of Lizzie having similarities to Stone.
The Old Curiosity Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Heart of Darkness (other topics)Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth (other topics)
Martin Chuzzlewit (other topics)
Dirty Old London: The Victorian Fight Against Filth (other topics)
Bleak House (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
John Sutherland (other topics)Edgar Allan Poe (other topics)
