Tuesday [ February 7 ]

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Celebrating Charles Dickens On His 200th Birthday

On the occasion of Charles Dickens’ bicentennial, I invite you to re-read your favorite Dickens novel -- or read your first -- in celebration of the man who shaped English literature, drama, even language as we know it. As the Morgan Library and Museum Exhibit Charles Dickens at 200 states, Dickens was the “first true literary superstar,” a man whose works have inspired more stage, movie, and TV adaptations than any other author. This is probably why, even if you’ve never delved into Dickens, you know the plot, or even lines, from at least one of his books. Who hasn’t referred to the famous Oliver Twist quote, “Please, sir, can I have some more?” And one would really have to live under a rock to not know the plot of A Christmas Carol, or at least the phrase “Bah, Humbug!”

So why, with Dickens’ exquisitely crafted plots at your fingertips, would you slog through a lengthy book? Though Dickens certainly excels at plot, it’s his rich and visual style of writing that brings me back to his books, even when "The Muppet Christmas Carol" beckons. My favorite novel remains the first I ever read, A Tale of Two Cities. Perhaps because it was my first taste of Dickens’ keen take on British, and in this case French, society. Dickens wrote for the rich, but about the poor, and humanized the lower classes in a way that no other author had done before. It is one thing to watch a cold, hungry orphan in a movie. It is another to read Dickens’ bleak and striking descriptions, which stay put in your head for days.

But of course, the reason A Tale of Two Cities is my favorite novel circles back to its brilliant plot and characters. Who is not struck by the poeticism of Madame Defarge, holding the future in her knitting needles, or the heartbreaking cost of war, embodied in Manette’s fervent cobbling? At its core, A Tale of Two Cities is about redemption of the soul; of being able to say one had a life worth living. How can you pass up a tale like that?