Merely finishing this beast of novel gives me a sense of accomplishment. This edition is 833 pages of small type, without a single blank page or added space, not even for the beginnings of chapters. Let's estimate: 12 words per line, 39 lines per page, 833 pages equals 489,844 words, minus about 20 or 25 percent for white space gives us almost 400 thousand words. That's four times the size of a modern novel.
Update: Went to Project Gutenberg and downloaded a text copy, pasted it into Word, and after it thought about it for awhile it came back with a word count of - 358,952. So I should have deducted 27% from my back of the envelope calculations. That's still a sizable novel.
I spent about a month wading through this (while reading, and finishing, several other more modern novels, at the same time), and it was worth every bit of the effort. This may be my new favorite Dickens' novel. It's definitely more mature than "David Copperfield", more satisfying than "A Tale of Two Cities", more convincing than "Bleak House". All the elements we expect from Dickens are here: the settings, the unforgettable characters, the compassion, the sentimentalism. And the female character that is too good to be true, as well - she always seems to show up in a Dickens novel somewhere, and in this case, regardless of the title, she is at the center of all the activity.
And, as usual, Dickens cannot resist wrapping up every character, no matter how insignificant, and bringing everyone, no matter how wicked or debased, to an appropriate end as elevated as he can manage.
So put this novel on your nightstand and chip away at it gradually for a month or so - it will be well worth the effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment