Dickens Gets the Hemingway Treatment

A CHRISTMAS CAROL RETOLD IN THE MANNER OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY

By New Street Communications

1: Marley’s Ghost

Marley was dead to begin with. Ten years dead. He had carried every weight the world could lay upon a man, but in the end he died all the same – in fact, made his own exit in his own time – and did so without complaint. He wanted more. There was none. And so he departed. He was cold in the ground, his eyes closed to all things, his feet pointed east.

Scrooge no more thought of his old friend, however, than he did of his second divorce or of the time (on a Christmas Eve, just like this) at Havana’s Floridita when he’d matched drinks one-for-one with a man who was a coward. Each downed glass after glass of rum; neither got drunk. The coward, who claimed to be a good Catholic, was long gone. Over the course of six decades, one left much behind and could count many graves. But, if one was honest and unflinching, he understood that there was no tragedy in this.

The snows of Idaho were as beautiful as they were silent. Light from the full moon fell across the Big Wood River. Sprays of pine rose with great dignity amid the white of the valley and the white of the distant Boulder Mountains. Cottonwoods stood naked. Trail Creek, Warm Springs Creek, Silver Creek and even the river itself lay frozen on their surfaces…

BOOK DESCRIPTION (FROM AMAZON): Ketchum, Idaho – Christmas, 1959: Blizzard-bound, Ernest Hemingway occupies himself with wine and prose, recreating his own rendition of Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol. The story he spins carries echoes of himself. Afflicted by depression and concern over what he feels are his failing artistic powers, he reaches back to a timeless story of renewal, and to memory, to kindle a sense of joy and redemption. (Note: The book is 48 pages in length.)

Bleak House, novel by Charles Dickens

In an article about what inspired her novel, Debt, author Rachel Carey mentions Charles Dickens‘ novels, including Bleak House. Many other authors have cited Bleak House as an inspiration — F. Scott Fitzgerald called it “Dickens’ best novel.” 

In an essay featured in Lectures on Literature, the notoriously critical Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) — the Wellesley and Cornell professor best known as author of Lolita — praises Bleak House from every direction, but mainly focuses on the novel’s atmosphere, which Nabokov views as a character in the book. He also lauds the unusual narration techniques — an omniscient third-person narrator alternating with a first person narrator (a young woman named Esther Summerson — the only female narrator in the Dickens canon).

All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.”

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

An excellent online version of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, in an easy-to-read, attractive format, is available from Pennsylvania State University here.  

Author Rachel Carey Talks About Her Novel, DEBT

BEHIND THE SCENES

Author Rachel Carey Talks About Her Debut Novel, Debt

The original inspiration for Debt was my rediscovery, as an adult, of the works of Charles Dickens. I’d always liked Dickens, but I really fell in love with his writing when I was old enough and cynical enough to appreciate how smart he was about human weakness. But as I was reading Bleak House and Little Dorrit, I was also tracking the news about the financial meltdown of 2008, and I began to wonder what Dickens would have made of a figure like Bernie Madoff. What would he have had to say about students who owed a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt, or bankers who received a government bailout and immediately paid themselves million dollar bonuses with taxpayer money?

I think Dickens would have understood those people very well, because people like that appear in all his novels: people who take out debt because they convince themselves it’s necessary, poor people who struggle against a system they don’t understand, rich people who justify any amount of self-indulgence by claiming that they are “important.” But if there was a modern American writer tackling our debt-ridden society with Dickensian scope, I wasn’t sure who it was. So I decided to take on a challenge: writing the book I thought Dickens would have written, if he’d been alive to witness our current social ills.

Of course, the book didn’t turn out at all like a Dickens novel, because my own voice and perspective quickly took over the project. But many elements of Debt are stolen straight from Dickens: the picaresque characters from all walks of society, the dense plot filled with fantastic coincidences and illegitimate children, even a little lame boy who says, essentially, “God bless us, every one.” I also created a protagonist — an orphan, of course — who shared some superficial elements with my own life, not out of narcissism but because Dickens frequently did so. One of my favorite qualities in Dickens is the democratic quality of his plots, the way he weaves together the lives of the rich and poor, so I tried to keep that essential truth in my plotting of Debt: social classes are more interconnected than they appear, and sometimes the pauper has the power to bring down the king.

This book was my tribute to my favorite social satirist. I hope it brings some of the pleasure to my readers that his work has brought to me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rachel Carey is a writer and filmmaker. She received an MFA in Film Directing from NYU, a M.Ed. from Harvard, and a BA in English from Yale. She currently teaches college film classes — and lives with her husband and daughter in New Jersey. Rachel is still paying back her student loans — and has dedicated her novel to the Sallie Mae Corporation.

ANNOUNCEMENT: For her outstanding and original writing, Silver Birch Press is nominating Rachel Carey for a 2013 Pushcart Prize. 

NOTE: A FREE Kindle version of the Silver Birch Press release Debt, a novel by Rachel Carey is available through Monday, Nov. 18, 2013. You can download the Kindle version— which retails for $6.99 – for free at Amazon.com.

PHOTOS: Author photo and cover photo by Jeff McCrum.

Summer Came, quote by Charles Dickens

“…summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.” CHARLES DICKENS, Oliver Twist

Painting: “The White Horse” by John Constable (1819)

Merry Christmas from Silver Birch Press and Charles Dickens

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”

EBENEZER SCROOGE in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

ILLUSTRATION: “Bob Cratchit & Tiny Tim” by Norman Rockwell (1934)

Alternative Dickens, New Yorker Cartoon by J.B. Handelsman

New Yorker cartoon by J.B. Handelsman

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Excerpt)

by Charles Dickens

“Nephew!” returned the uncle, “keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.”

“Keep it!” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.”

“Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Much good may it do you! Much good has it ever done you!”

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time…as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

Illustration: Victorian Christmas Card (Cambridge University Library Special Collections)

A Christmas Carol Retold in the Manner of Ernest Hemingway

A CHRISTMAS CAROL RETOLD IN THE MANNER OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY

By New Street Communications

1: Marley’s Ghost

Marley was dead to begin with. Ten years dead. He had carried every weight the world could lay upon a man, but in the end he died all the same – in fact, made his own exit in his own time – and did so without complaint. He wanted more. There was none. And so he departed. He was cold in the ground, his eyes closed to all things, his feet pointed east.

Scrooge no more thought of his old friend, however, than he did of his second divorce or of the time (on a Christmas Eve, just like this) at Havana’s Floridita when he’d matched drinks one-for-one with a man who was a coward. Each downed glass after glass of rum; neither got drunk. The coward, who claimed to be a good Catholic, was long gone. Over the course of six decades, one left much behind and could count many graves. But, if one was honest and unflinching, he understood that there was no tragedy in this.

The snows of Idaho were as beautiful as they were silent. Light from the full moon fell across the Big Wood River. Sprays of pine rose with great dignity amid the white of the valley and the white of the distant Boulder Mountains. Cottonwoods stood naked. Trail Creek, Warm Springs Creek, Silver Creek and even the river itself lay frozen on their surfaces…

BOOK DESCRIPTION (FROM AMAZON): Ketchum, Idaho – Christmas, 1959: Blizzard-bound, Ernest Hemingway occupies himself with wine and prose, recreating his own rendition of Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol. The story he spins carries echoes of himself. Afflicted by depression and concern over what he feels are his failing artistic powers, he reaches back to a timeless story of renewal, and to memory, to kindle a sense of joy and redemption. (Note: The book is 48 pages in length.)

Bleak House, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Favorite Dickens Novel

I’ve always been interested in learning which books some of my favorite authors admire. Today, to commemorate F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s belated birthday, I looked up the novels Fitzgerald recommended to Sheilah Graham — as chronicled in her memoir, College of One. The list includes Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Cheri by Colette, A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, and Bleak House by Charles Dickens. According to Graham, Fitzgerald called Bleak House “Dickens’ best novel.” 

At 350,000 words — most editions are close to 1,000 pages — Bleak House is a doorstopper. I find the novel’s sheer size daunting. I can count on two hands the really, really long books I’ve read in my life. I’ve always said I’d rather read five 200-page books than one 1,000-page book (I plead eyestrain), but I have tackled Bleak House — though not at Fitzgerald’s recommendation.

I read an essay on Bleak House in Lectures on Literature by the notoriously critical Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) — the Wellesley and Cornell professor best known as author of Lolita. A native of Russia, Nabokov had him some opinions about English literature! But I’ll limit my comments to his thoughts on Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

All we have to do when reading Bleak House is to relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle.”

VLADIMIR NABOKOV

In Lectures on Literature, Nabokov praises Bleak House from every direction — but mainly focuses on the novel’s atmosphere, which Nabokov sees as a character in the book. He also lauds the unusual narration techniques — an omniscient third-person narrator alternating with a first person narrator (a young woman named Esther Summerson — the only female narrator in the Dickens canon).

About a decade ago, my New Year’s resolutions included “read Bleak House.” (You know, when you say to yourself: One way or another, I am going to finish this book!) And I enjoyed the novel so much, it didn’t take me a year to reach the final page.

A few years after I’d finished Bleak House, Masterpiece Theatre ran a multi-part adaptation — but I didn’t watch it. I knew the program could never live up to the story I’d pictured in my mind. And I realized that if the program had aired before I’d read the novel, I might never have attempted to make my way through the behemoth. (I’ll admit, I’ve  never been able to get more than halfway through Moby Dick.)

So if you’d like to commemorate F. Scott Fitzgerald’s belated birthday by reading one of his favorite novels, you can find an excellent online version from Pennsylvania State University here. (In an attractive, easy-to-read format.) This version is only 872 pages long. If you read five pages a day, you’ll be finished by spring. Enjoy! 

Le Quatorze Juillet

The 14th of July, a national holiday in France — La Fête Nationale — commemorates commoners storming  Bastille prison in 1789 to free political prisoners. The event occurred near the start of the French Revolution (1789-1799) — and served as a symbol of liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity). Vive la France!

…every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other…when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret.” CHARLES DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities

Photo: Thierry Bézecourt