David Copperfield

I've recently finished reading David Copperfield. A lot of people (including geniuses like Dostoyevsky and Kafka) rate this as a great work of literature. Dickens himself apparently thought it his best novel.

As far as I can see, these are the main pros and cons:

Pro

- Occasionally vivid (e.g. Chapter 55, "Tempest") and always economical narration;
- An excellent ear for language, dialect and discourse: every communication (verbal or written) between characters is instantly believable.

Con

- A plot so contrived as to be laughable. There are very few incidental characters, no passing attachments, very little background noise or colour beyond the main action. It's as if the hero lives in a bubble with about ten other people, all of whom collide with each other endlessly to the exclusion of the rest of the world. When Dickens is wrapping things up at the end, having DC's former schoolmaster conduct him on a tour of a prison containing two other previously unconnected characters in adjacent cells, I'm sure he must be winding me up. All the exactitude and realism of the narrative style is undermined by the author's obvious obsession with knitting every last yarn of plot into a ball so tight it is only six inches across, yet weighs more than Saturn;
- Characters which are cardboard cutouts. Hardly any (the hero, his aunt) have any moral nuance. There is more subtlety of motive in a pantomime. Very few people are all good or all bad, yet in 'Copperfield' very few are anything but. Even the narrator confesses his failings as if at a job interview - the tone is always "I was wrong then but I've seen the light now". By the end, the implication is, he's perfect, the natural end-product of a perfectly-plotted bildungsroman.

I've got nothing against transparent characters and plots, but in conjunction with what seems to be a genuine desire in the narrrative style to show things as they are, they make no sense. It's almost as if there's one person in charge of the writing and another, with diametrically opposed views on art, supervising the book's structure.

Anyhow, I just can't see why it's regarded as a masterpiece. Can any of you lot see something I can't or maybe show me where I'm going wrong?

What other Dickens should I read to feel better about the guy? Just what's so great about David Copperfield?

And did he really make the Statue of Liberty disappear?

Dickens doesn't age well - or rather, readers who read Dickens early often find the exercise later in life to be anti-climatic, or disappointing. Maybe it is just me, but I fell in love with David Copperfield (the character not the novel) early, early - and so many of the over-drawn characters: Micawber, Peggoty, Heep - and lovely Agnes, are still quite close to me. Dickens sticks to you like the smell of warm pudding.

For a child, the world that Dickens creates: hapless heroes, insular paths, surmountable poverty - is a great comfort. It may be difficult to swallow as an adult, but wonderful to re-read with a child.

Disappear? No, he merely palmed it.

I recently read this book and went through stages with it. When I would pick it up I'd get engrossed and read 200 pages in a sitting, but parts dragged and I would be reluctant to pick it up again. Then when I would, of course, I would become enthralled again. I did enjoy the book very much, but I agree it's too long.

About his books being too long-I remember reading some time ago that Dickens was paid by the word and that whenever he gave a reading of his works, he heavily edited his writing to shorten things. With that in mind, I only read Dickens abridged and I feel no qualms about that. And yes, his novels seem so contrived now-but then, so do Shakespeare and the Bible. We've heard the stories so much. The stories we haven't heard have still been used by many other authors over time. I agree with enevada's assessment-Dickens doesn't age well (at least, not when compared to many other classic authors).

Part (OK, a LARGE part) of enjoying Dickens is the length of the story. Arriving at the final destination is nice, but if you cannot enjoy meandering then he is not for you.

I think Dickens does fantastic characterizations. For sure they're often exaggerated and built around one or two adjectives, but they become loveable for so well encapsulating that image. All the Dickens plots I've read so far hinge on massive coincidence, which can drive you bonkers since it isn't tolerated now like it was then. But at the time of writing it was considered perfectly acceptable. That's a case of "time's they are a-changin'".

My problem with the novel was that vast portion in the middle where all the drama is with the non-David characters. Nothing happens in his own life, only in the lives around him, for about 200 or 300 pages.

(And nope, he just turned the stage.)

>6 Cecrow: I love David Copperfield, especially the first part of the book centered on young David. But I agree with you completely: at the end of the book I feel I know very little about adult David--how he really thinks and feels. Even so, I love the journey.

Dickens is readable and still surprisingly fresh. He's a bit like Shakespeare in analyzing various human emotions. This is a bit rural, once people had time for such emotions. But all these situations, patterns are still encountered today. Also The Bible is often about emotions, and it's also rural. Of course Dickens describes life in a large city, London, but it's London on the Thames, still a bit medieval, like Chaucer's London. I would say that Dickens is some authority for me.

I just finished a fantastic book about Dickens: The Artful Dickens: The Tricks and Ploys of the Great Novelist by John Mullan. Citing examples from all of the novels, Mullan explores topics like: use of present vs. past tense to create tension (an innovation at the time), foreshadowing ("foreseeing"), humor juxtaposed with dark themes, speech, character names, ghosts, drowning, and what Mullan calls "fantasizing"--the similes, metaphors and "as if"/"as though" phrases found everywhere in the novels.

Just one of the many interesting stories was how Dickens as a young adult was fascinated by a London entertainer named Charles Mathews, who was a brilliant imitator. Dickens would watch this man perform every night for almost a year, he was so enthralled. Dickens himself loved to imitate and mimic people's speech and mannerisms, and worked hard to make his written speech and details of each of his characters immediately recognizable and discernable from other characters. This book makes me want to go back and read all of the novels again, even the ones I didn't like as well, just to experience his amazing writing techniques.

14 years after I started this thread, I've read six additional Dickens resulting in the following ranking:

1. Our Mutual Friend
2. Bleak House
3. Pickwick Papers
4. Tale of Two Cities
5. Great Expecations
6. Copperfield
7. Hard Times

I only really enjoyed the first three of those. I like Dickens at his most atmospheric, writing about places (mainly London). All his books have this, but in Copperfield and Hard Times, for example, the ridiculous all-good and all-bad characters were impossible to overlook. I think enevada has a point: many of D's characters seem aimed at children or people willing to suspend disbelief. Nothing wrong with that, but these days maybe there are fewer such readers (or maybe it's just me).

I'm not sure what my next one will be (recommendations?), but thank you to those who responded above; I enjoyed reading your replies.

>10 yarb: "I think enevada has a point: many of D's characters seem aimed at children or people willing to suspend disbelief."

You gave 5 stars to The Master and Margarita. What made you willing to suspend disbelief when you read it?

>11 cpg: Is that a serious question? If you aim at realism, you're expected to stick to real. Not so if you aim at something completely different

>12 SandraArdnas: "If you aim at realism, you're expected to stick to real."

Expected by whom? Do great authors do the expected? Does the category of magical realism not exist?

>13 cpg: Hence, my emphasis on 'realism' as opposed to magical realism. Do great authors do the expected is trite nonsense. Once again, if you're purporting to realistic portrayal, than failure to do so is failure. It seems ridiculous this should be spelled out, but there you have it.

>14 SandraArdnas: "Hence, my emphasis on 'realism' as opposed to magical realism."

Wikipedia says: "magic realism paints a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements". It sounds like magical realists "aim at realism" but don't "stick to real".

>15 cpg: Oh for pity's sake, no it does not aim at realism, It aims at magical realism, hence that name rather than realism. It combines the two, usually using non-realistic, magical if you will, elements for poetic effect. That is very, very removed from realism poetics, which is where Dickens aims and belongs. But to end this fruitless discussion, if you think oversimplified characters verging on caricature work in anything other than comedy/satire, good for you. Most people think it's bad writing.