The Dead Authors Rule

In the last year or so, I’ve read several novels by Charles Dickens. Dickens, of course, is widely known to be one the greatest English authors of all time, so it may come as a shock for me to say that I don’t think Dickens was that great of a writer. Still I really enjoy reading his novels and hopefully, I can explain why.

The best parts of any Dickens novel are the obvious comedy, the unique metaphors, and the character development. The problem with his novels is that they develop so slowly. They are more like a long-running TV sitcom than a great novel. It takes 300 or more pages to wade through the main characters and get a general idea of the book’s theme. Minor characters pop up and disappear randomly. Sometimes their stories are reconciled by the end of the book, but often hastily. I think his books are like this because they were originally written as serials for publication in newspapers. They are meant to be read in spurts and then to wait for the next installment. Ironically this makes for perfect reading for someone caring for an infant.

Although his novels are in no way repetitions of one another story-wise, he definitely had a pattern that he followed. The main character is either morally superior (Mr. Pickwick, Nicholas Nickleby, Oliver Twist) or have life experiences that cause them to improve morally or mature (Mr. Scrooge, David Copperfield, Pip). There are always characters with funny names (Mr. Phunky is my favorite). There is usually someone confined to a debtors prison or corrupt boarding school. Although his novels aren’t about romance, there is usually a love story. Like a TV sitcom, there are many stories going on at once, sometimes vaguely connected, other times wholly unrelated. They can be hard to follow at first and suddenly you become captivated and start to wonder what will happen next.

One of my rules for picking a new book to read is that the author must be dead. I made this rule because I noticed I liked classic literature better and I reasoned that if an author is dead and still popular, he or she must be worth the time to read. After all, you cannot read everything. But spending time with Charles Dickens has showed me that my rule is a good rule for a different reason.

An exception I made to my rule of dead authors was a series written by Beverly Lewis, a very not-dead author who writes fiction about the Amish. I loved the books because, in addition to being good stories, they opened a world to me I knew almost nothing about. Classic literature does the same thing. Authors write best when they set their work in a time they are familiar with. Reading Dickens, you can piece together all the details he gives to see what 19th century London was like. Dickens gives details about how the people dressed, ate, worked, shopped, and traveled. I feel like I understand some of what it was like to ride in a mail coach. I realized that there have always been "ambulance chaser" attorneys. Women gossip, men get in fights and everyone drinks too much.

Dickens is great to read because of all you learn about how much life has changed while people have changed so little. I’m not sure he would be popular if he had emerged in our microwave culture. But I’m glad he wrote when he did.