Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (1836)

 

Oliver Twist

Charles Dicken’s “Oliver Twist” is one of the best-known stories in this segment of nineteenth century literature. There are quite a few adaptations around and the main characters are well known by name among people who have never read the book or watched any of the adaptations. Until this time round, I belonged to that group of people.

I had my own pretty solid idea about what sort of story “Oliver Twist” was and I must say, it turned out to be quite different.

The basic plotline of “Oliver Twist” is that Oliver is an orphan who spends his early childhood in the care of the parish social services in provincial England, early nineteenth century. This means abuse in the extreme. Life in the parish workhouse is portrayed as very hard and with very little freedom and sustenance. It is written flat out that most children die so the parish can spend less money on the poor. Oliver’s chief crime at this time is, that, when the children are very hungry, he asks for more food. Oh horror! At this stage he is up against the tyrannic Mr. Bumble, the beadle.

At age 9, Oliver is apprenticed to an undertaker, but gets in trouble when he stands up against harassment from one of the other apprentices (Noah Claypole). Oliver runs away towards London where he meets Dawkins, also known as The Artful Dodger. The Artful brings him into Fagin’s gang in the underbelly of London. This is a gang of pickpockets and what other scams Fagin can come up with. Only when out on his first job does Oliver realize that he is supposed to be stealing and so he runs away. He is caught and brought before a magistrate, but the elderly man whom he was supposed to steal from, drops his charges and instead takes him in.

In the care of Mr. Brownlow, Oliver recovers and just as his life starts to look bright, he is kidnapped back into the gang. This time round is no fun at all, Oliver knows what the gang is up and when they take him along for a housebreaking, he sounds the alarm, and is shot at in the ensuing melee. Fortunately, the people in the house are the friendly Maylies and Oliver finds a new home there. Still, Oliver is not out trouble as Sikes, Monk and Fagin are up to more mischief.

There is a lot more going on in Oliver Twist than I thought. As a tale, there are many twists and turns and lots of drama and for that alone, the book is a page-turner. Here I thought this was about a boy living a dismal life with a gang of thieves, but there are so much more to the story. No wonder this was quite a bestseller back in the nineteenth century.

Beside the story itself, what really works in this book is when Dickens talk about life in the underworld of London. There are many details and the world has texture and smell and individuals fleshed out in details. You can follow them around on a map using the landmarks of London and you can visualise the warren of Saffron Hill with a pub like the Cripples. The pleasure Dickens had when describing these characters and their banter is very obvious and the unfortunate result is that I as a reader risks caring more for these characters, even the brutal Sikes, than the heroes of the story.

Dickens clearly had much less fun with the heroes. As characters they are surprisingly flat, with the main character trait being that they are GOOD, whatever that means and to the exclusivity of all else. They are so over the top virtuous that I frankly do not like then very much and that includes, unfortunately, Oliver Twist himself.

Another feature of the book that at first seems like an asset, but eventually becomes a problem is the comic exaggeration used by Dickens. Dickens wanted to highlight the absurd cruelty with which poor people were treated at the time and so uses a sort of comic exaggeration to describe the callousness of those in charge of poverty relief. I have no doubt that abuse and fraudulence at the expense of the poor was the order of the day, but in Dickens’ writing it becomes too easy to dismiss it as exaggeration and the loss of realism removes us, sadly, from the story. We do get some bitter-sweet laughs, but frankly, I think the price is too high for those. A character like Mr. Bumble belongs in a cartoon, not in anything resembling realism.

Then of course there is the very strong antisemitic trait. I am not certain what Dicken’s excuse was for that, but this is rather hard to swallow, and I am usually not so sensitive to that.

This all sounds like I was unhappy with Oliver Twist and that is not true at all. There is just so much good stuff here that the faults are so much more glaring for the missed opportunity.

I do recommend it, and I am surprising myself by looking forward to more from Charles Dickens.

  

The Nose - Nikolai Gogol (1836)

 

The Nose

“The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol is a bizarre concoction.

The first thing you notice is that it is remarkably short (which I guess is why it is labelled a “short story”) at just 38 pages with a very large font. It was very quick to get through.

The topic of the story is... strange. Major Kovaloff wakes up one day and discovers that his nose is gone. Where it used to be is just a flat piece of skin. Apparently, his nose has left him and gone on adventures. He recognizes it out in town posing as a State Councillor, a functionary several degrees above his own, which presents him with some problems in getting it back. The nose gets away and Kovaloff tries to insert an advertisement in a local newspaper for his nose. He is refused due to the absurdity of the request. The same happens at the police station.

He is busy accusing a lady-friend, who wants him to marry her daughter, for his lost nose, when a policeman shows up with his nose. Kovaloff’s barber found it in a piece of bread... Unfortunately, the doctor says it will not get back on, yet the next morning it is back in its place.

The story ends with the author exclaiming that he has no clue what this story was about, that it is totally absurd and that it is strange that authors can choose to write on such useless topics.

I must say, I am equally confused.

I do understand that this is an absurd story and that the absurdity makes it comedic. It is actually very funny. Major Kovaloff is a man very impressed with himself and his appearance so to suddenly find himself without a nose is a terrible hit to his pride. Add to that the humiliation that the nose has simply left him, posing as somebody else. Even without an intimate knowledge of the vanity of Russian officers in the 1830’ies, I can sense how this tickles him the wrong way.

What I am missing is the point of the story. While it must have been fun to write and certainly is fun to read, such a story does not get the fame it has unless there is a point. The closest I get (with the help of Wikipedia) is that this has to do with, yes, vanity. With the, absurd, obsession of physical appearance of officials in St. Petersburg.

It is fun, easy and not a little silly.

 

 

Father Goriot - Honore De Balzac (1835)

 

Old Man Goriot

With “Old Man Goriot” (or "Father Goriot") we are getting another book by Honoré de Balzac, but where I was disappointed with “Eugenie Grandet”, I can finally see why Balzac is as big a star as he is. “Old Man Goriot” is an impressive book.

An instalment in Balzac’s “La Comédie humaine”, “Old Man Goriot” takes place in and around a boarding house in Paris in the year 1819. This is a boarding house in the lower price range and the boarders are generally out of their luck. There is the girl Victorine, whose very rich father has disowned her to avoid offering a dowry, there are the mysterious and booming Vautrin, full of schemes but the main characters are Old Man Goriot and the young student Rastignac.

Goriot moved in years before as a wealthy man, but has moved to cheaper and cheaper accommodation and now resides in the worst room of the house. Keeping to himself, he is generally ridiculed by the other boarders, and it is rumoured that he lost his money on high-end prostitutes. At least he is frequently seen with women much smarter than he is.

Rastignac is intent on enjoying the Belle Monde of Paris, but although of a noble family, he is very short of funds. The short cut seems to be to find a wealthy mistress and through his cousin Comtesse de Beauséant, he is introduced to this world. He learns that Madame de Restaud and Madame de Nucingen are actually Goriot’s daughters, Anastasie and Delphine. By starting a love affair with Delphine, Rastignac also befriends Goriot.

But not everything is as it seems...

There are a lot of things happening in “Old Man Goriot”. It is like a window into a complex world populated with real, though slightly extreme characters. There is a plotline where Vautrin wants Rastignac to marry Victorine, then get her brother “accidentally” killed in a duel, landing the inherence on her and by implication on Rastignac. In return, Vautrin would be setup up as a plantation owner in America. However, in my reading, I see two overriding themes.

One is the saintly father who gets abused for his love of his children. This is a variation on the King Lear story, though less bloody than in “Ran”. Goriot sacrifices everything for Delphine and Anastasie, but gets very little in return. They only need him when they need money and when he has no more to give, they need him no more. Is it the fault of the father to love (spoil) his children too much? Or is it the crime of his daughters and sons in law to not give the filial love he deserves? Or maybe it is simply the corruption of Paris.

The second theme is “the training of Rastignac”. Rastignac is the naive outsider, keen on getting involved in Parisian life. He presents outside eyes on his world and through his involvement with Vautrin and the other boarders of the boarding house, Madame de Beauséant and Goriot’s daughters, he (and we) is taught of the dark side of the Belle Monde. This is a world of wild luxury, but also of villainous behaviour, egocentrism and hidden tragedies. Rastignac is trained on how to successfully manoeuvre in this world, but he is also trained to see it for what it is and be disgusted in the process. What we do not know is whether this will make him a player or whether it will teach him to stay out of this game. I like to think it is the latter, but Balzac is ambiguous.

This is in fact a curious trait of Balzac’s writing in this book. He writes a lot about what the characters are and then makes them do or say things that are contrary to this description. As if his own characters have more integrity and are more real than his own narration. It takes a bit getting used to, but it is fascinating to experience.

In general, “Old Man Goriot” is a far more riveting and multifaceted story than “Eugenie Grandet” and although there is a real danger of getting lost in the details, they also add so much texture to the story that it becomes alive and relevant.

It also made me curios about the larger project of “La Comedie humaine” and I cannot rule out I will dive more into that at some point.

Highly recommended.

  

Happy New Year 2025

 

Happy New Year 2025

It is that time of the year again, 2025 is just around the corner. Another year is in the bag, for better or worse.

I know I usually give a small summary of the year in general, but as I would just be repeating myself, I would like instead to mention an observation. On a radio show I listened to recently, it was mentioned how apocalyptic movies and tv series are in vogue. It is not something that has just happened, it has been creeping up on us over the years, but I think it is very true. Screen through the Netflix program or any other streaming service, and dystopic, apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic titles are abundant. I used to like the genre, but lately I find it terribly oppressive and often a little too close to reality.

If I have one wish for 2025 it would be for a more positive vibe. Something a bit more hopeful.

A bit more like the eighties.

In 2024 I reviewed just 47 movies, making this the slowest year for me so far. 7 of these were off-List movies, leaving 40 movies on the List. This took me from 1982 to 1985.

The greatest movie experience of the year must have been watching the Talking Heads concert movie “Stop Making Sense” in a cinema full of fans (reviewed in September). This was an experience I can only recommend.

On my book blog I read and reviewed 8 titles, taking me from 1824 to 1833. This is good enough for me and there have been some very decent books among them. The best probably being “The Red and the Black” by Stendhal.

I wish everybody a happy new year and all the best for 2025.

Eugenie Grandet - Honore De Balzac (1833)

 Eugénie Grandet

Honoré de Balzac is an author I will get back to a few times on the List. As far as I can see he has three entries, but I may be missing some. “Eugénie Grandet” is his first entry.

The titular Eugénie Grandet is the daughter of a cooper, Grandet, turned winegrower turned landowner in provincial France. Grandet is elaborately characterized as a miser of the worst sort. Exceedingly good at making money and even better at not spending them, he and his family, Eugénie and her mother, live an extremely frugal life as if they were poor despite his wealth of millions.

Hovering around the Grandet family are the vultures in the form of the Cruchot and de Grassin families. They are themselves important families in the provincial town, but have their eyes on the wealth of Grandet. They are the only ones with an idea of how enormous his fortune is, as Cruchot, the lawyers, and de Grassin, the bankers, handle Grandet’s affairs. Both eye the prospect of marrying one of their family to Eugénie Grandet and thereby become sole heirs to the fortune.

Then arrive Grandet’s nephew, Charles Grandet, from Paris. He is a fob, used to an expensive lifestyle in Paris, but has been sent to his uncle by his father to get him out of the way before his bankruptcy and suicide. So, Charles arrives full of arrogance but soon to learn he is entirely penniless. Grandet sees him as a liability he must get rid of as soon as possible, and is arranging for shipping him to the colonies, while Eugénie falls completely in love with her cousin.

This causes a strife between father and daughter and although it eventually heals, her infatuation with Charles keeps her in a mental prison, especially as Charles turns out to be a scoundrel.

“Eugénie Grandet” was a part of a larger project of de Balzac called “La Comedie humaine”, which consists of scenes from different parts of life. In this sense “Eugénie Grandet” is supposed to represent something general, though I am struggling to see exactly what. Is it a portrait of a miser? Of how a miser can ruin a family? Is it the generational rebellion of a younger generation? Or even the rebellion of a woman against a father or a lifestyle? All these are intimated, but none of them seems satisfying. In fact, I am having problems working out what the point is with the book.

Balzac uses a lot of generalizations, constantly pointing out how this or that part of the story is representative of something general, both about misers and vultures circling around money, but especially on women. He appears to have some pretty deep-rooted ideas on what and how women are and most of these are prejudiced in the extreme. Therefore, it is clear to me that “Eugénie Grandet” must be read as representative of something general, as a scene that can be found as typical. But is this just to try to explain how people become what they are? Or is it a cynical portrait of people Balzac did not like? He was a spendthrift himself, constantly in debt, and it is very likely he wanted to see his creditors lampooned, but is that all this is?

As a novel, I was not particularly impressed with this story or its style. There is a build up to a crisis, and strife between father and daughter, but it never really explodes, but merely fizzles. This may of course be my 21st century self expecting more than a 19th century author would deliver, but I do believe “Eugénie Grandet” can be compared to the novels of Jane Austen where every one of them had deeper crisis’s and far more interesting resolutions than is the case for “Eugénie Grandet”. I would not go so far as to say it is boring, but it is very much a lost opportunity for something far better.

The only excuse would be to serve some point, and it is this point I am missing. As “Eugénie Grandet” is a highly celebrated novel, it is likely just me being dense.

I already mentioned the style of Balzac to use generalizations and prejudices and even when I try to think like a 19th century reader, this grinds badly on me. He comes through as a bigot who does not care much for his characters and even his protagonist comes through weak and miserable.

I cannot honestly call this an enjoyable novel, and the only real blessing is that it was short. Other readers may disagree.

 

 

Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin (1833)

 

Eugene Onegin

Alexander Pushkin is apparently a big thing in Russia and even I have heard the name mentioned, though I have never read anything from him before. As I understand it, he primarily wrote in verse and “Eugene Onegin” is his attempt at writing a novel in that format.

The main character of “Eugene Onegin” is the title character. Eugene is a dandy and a playboy who lives a dissipated life. When he inherits an estate he gets into serious money, but also relocates to the countryside. Here he meets a number of people. Lensky is a young poet, he befriends. Olga is a pretty, airheaded girl whom Lensky intends to marry, and Tatyana is Olga’s more bookish sister.

Tatyana is infatuated with Eugene, but when she spills her heart to him, he gently, but firmly, rebuffs her. She is severely shaken by that. Eugene is upset with Lensky for pressing him into boring company and takes his revenge by showing excessive attention on Olga. This upsets Lensky who challenges Eugene to a duel. Lensky looses, Olga quickly marries someone else, and Eugene disappears.

Years later, Tatyana, seemingly gotten over the affair, marries a general or prince or something like that and then meets Eugene Onegin again. Now he realizes what he has lost, but that door is now closed and there is no way he can get her back.

For a story written in verse, this is reasonably tangible and accessible. It has an actual plot! Not perhaps the most exciting plot, it does lean heavily into romantic clichés, but quite lucid considering the format.

I have never entirely understood the idea of poetry or fully appreciated it. Poetry seems suited to express small, profound truths or emotions, such as haiku poetry, or intimate sensibilities, such as streams of thought, but that also seems to be more modern use of the format. Traditionally, the rhymes and strict rhythmic syntax are useful for singing and proclamation, i.e. an oral presentation of the text and therefore practical more than arty.

Pushkin seems to place himself in between these positions. He wants to tell a story as a novel, but rather than using the far more flexible standard prose form, he restricts himself to the rules of the verse. It is difficult for me not to see this as an affectation. An ambition of writing a Homerian story, suitable for declamation or to present the story in the more elegant and charming format of verse.

Personally, I am not charmed by verse. It looks restrictive and makes expressing the story far more challenging, but maybe that is the point; to show he can do that. In which case it becomes a self-gratifying project. Well, what do I know, I do not understand poetry.

I understand that for Russian speakers, Pushkin’s work should be quite an experience, taking the language to another level. I do not speak Russian and therefore read an English translation, so I am simply impressed that the translator managed to find suitable rhymes and stick to the format even in translation. That cannot have been easy. Unfortunately, I am not getting any big revelation of use of language or what can be done in verse. That part went over my head.

The book is surprisingly easy to get through. The verse form at least has the advantage that the reading becomes rhythmic and makes reading an almost automatic exercise. The lack of obscurity in the text also made for an easy read and I am grateful for that.

This is not stuff that roams through my mind for a long time. Rather, it was a book to get through and I happy it was easy. Poetry buffs may have a different opinion, but that is their issue.

 

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo (1831)

 

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is a favourite for adaptation. Wikipedia lists 16 cinema adaptations alone with numerous television and stage plays to boot, including several ballets. Curiously, I do not think I ever watched any of them, not even the Disney version, but you must have lived under a rock to not at least get the gist of it.

Victor Hugo’s novel is a sprawling piece of work. He happily changes lead characters throughout, to leave former leads out of the picture for hundreds of pages. Sometimes he even has entire chapters without any characters.

One of his characters is Pierre Gringoire, a poet and philosopher. His stage play tanks so with nothing to his name but the cloths he wears, he joins the homeless outcasts of Paris. A gypsy girl by the name Esmeralda saves his life by formally marrying him (though not in spirit). Gringoire will appear a few times, mostly as a witness, but a few times as an agent.

Esmeralda is a young woman, presumably a gypsy (Roma, would be the modern term) who earns her living by dancing and singing on the street and performing tricks with her pet goat. Esmeralda is deeply infatuated with a captain of the guard, Phoebus.

Phoebus is a vain libertine of a character. He is officially betrothed to a wealthy (though insipid) girl, but that does not stop him from trying to get into the pants of Esmeralda, especially since she seems willing. When that goes horribly wrong and Esmeralda is accused of stabbing him, he renounces her and returns to his betrothed.

It was not Esmeralda who stabbed him though, but a priest at the Notre Dame cathedral, Claude Frollo, who had been following Esmeralda. Despite his wows, he is deeply infatuated with the girl, sort of a love/hate relationship. When Phoebus is about to take Esmeralda’s virginity, it is he who jumps forward to stab him. Not for Esmeralda’s sake, but because nobody else can have her. He even tries to kidnap her using his pet cripple, Quasimodo, but that also fails.

Quasimodo is the eponymous hunchback of Notre Dame. He is deformed and deaf, supposedly a halfwit, but very strong. When Frollo’s abduction scheme fails, Quasimodo is blamed. In the stockade, the only one showing mercy and offering him water is Esmeralda, earning her his eternal fealty.

The overriding theme seems to be that everybody wants somebody else, so nobody gets what they want. Frollo and Quasimodo wants Esmeralda. Esmeralda wants Phoebus and Phoebus does not care about anybody but himself. Only Gringoire seems to accept his lot and is the only one coming out of this on top.

The astounding thing to me is how moronic the principal characters are. The argument would be that it is love that messes with people’s brains, but seriously, it is a hard call who of these characters is most stupid. The amount of self-sabotage and recklessness all round is incredible. Granted, without it there would be very little story, but it bothers me when the drama hinges on people making idiotic decisions.

Put a gun to my head, Esmeralda would be the worst. Not for staying principled when standing her ground against Frollo, but for assigning so much faith in the worthless Phoebus, who has literally nothing to his credit but a handsome uniform. Her empty headed idiocy would be a good match for the moronic Phoebus, but it is also what ultimately costs her her life and she never realizes that.

The failure of finding relatable characters, with the possible exception of Gringoire, makes it a disappointing read. You can only spend so much time with idiots. I also find Hugo’s narrative style problematic. The novel does not feel planned, at least not structurally, but evolves from spur of the moment decisions. My impression is of a writer who writes about what he feels like today, with little care of what went before or whether it fits into a general narrative. Tying such a sprawling narrative into a whole would be challenging and I do not think Hugo is altogether successful there.

Obviously, I am in the minority here. The stature of this story demonstrates that beyond a doubt. You do not make 16 movies on a novel people do not like. I just wonder if anybody actually read the novel or simply base their opinion on various sanitized versions of it.

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” does not rank very high for me and I am not rushing out to watch any of the 16 movies. There are a few more novels by Victor Hugo on the List, so he will get another chance to convince me of his claim to fame.