12in12 - My Charles Dickens Birthday Project

Charles Dickens' books have been adapted so often we don't need to read them any more. Discuss.

Next month, February 2012, is a big birthday for Charles Dickens. How big? Two hundred. Two centuries since the birth of Charles Dickens. He won't be around for it, of course; he's been dead for most of those two hundred years. So we'll have celebrate the day without him (again). It's February 7th, since you ask.



Dickens has spent nearly two hundred years as one of Britain's foremost writers, Well, one of the English-speaking world's foremost writers, certainly of those last two hundred years. That's quite an achievement, and he's left a wide-ranging legacy, second only really to Shakespeare in the English language. What makes it more impressive is that Dickens wrote in so many genres, not just the novels he's famous for: short stories, travel writing, journalism, plays, poetry and general non-fiction.

His work has been adapted and reworked over and over again, working its way into the collective consciousness of the English-speaking world, again rather like Shakespeare. Dickens' Christmas stories have come to define the Victorian Christmas for those of us too young to remember the reality, made the festive season the popular holiday it now is, and still strongly influences our modern perception of Christmas. Adaptations of A Christmas Carol abound toward the end of every year, and Scrooge has come to be a widely-recognised term for someone like Dickens' infamous character.

Even before the BBC started rummaging through the Dickensian back catalogue for their current season of work devoted to Charles (or Boz, as he sometimes preferred), he was frequently the subject of adaptations. Not only have Dickens' books been adapted, but he himself often appears for public readings (as the man himself did while still alive) – the most famous perhaps being Simon Callow's portrayal alongside Christopher Eccleston in the new Doctor Who.

In fact, Dickens seems to have been adapted so often that it seems we don't really need to read his books any more. I've certainly seen A Christmas Carol on stage enough times that I know the story and characters as well as if I'd read it. And that's the curse of the writer of 'classics', of members of the canon of 'great' writers; people don't actually read their books any more. As Mark Twain quoted a Professor Winchester: a classic is something everybody wants to have read, but nobody wants to read. Mind you, I'm always wary of Mark Twain quotes; they're prone to being greatly exaggerated.

I thought I'd celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Dickens' birth by actually reading some of these books that made his name and legacy. My birthday present to him will be to read twelve of Dickens' books in a year (I'm aiming for one in each month, of course). That's roughly eleven more Dickens books than I've managed to read in my life to date (1988-2011). For someone with an English Literature degree, I consider that a pretty poor effort.



To kick off my Dickensian effort (see what I mean? Dickens is sufficiently well-established that we have an adjective for him and his work which immediately conjours up a certain type of character and location, usually something Victorian and in London), I'll be starting with a Christmas short story: The Chimes.

So, welcome to my Dickensian sort-of extravaganza (can an extravaganza take place over twelve months? is that over doing it?). I call it 12in12, and I hope you stick around until the (bitter?) end.

So far I've covered:
January - The Chimes
February - Hard Times: For These Hard Times
March - Bleak House
April - The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
May - American Notes for General Circulation(coming soon...)

Thanks to Will Clayton for the birthday cake image.

The other images depict Dickens at a reading of his own, and Fringe Festival stalwart Pip Utton playing Dickens.

Then we've got the cover of the Complete Dickens Kindle edition, 99p from Amazon.

Waiting for Godot at Newcastle's Theatre Royal - he didn't turn up

Newcastle has now been added to my list of 'Cities I like'. I already knew I liked the place from a night-time visit last year, but having seen it in the daylight today, I like it even more. It's just really nice. Mostly. There are some tragedies of architecture there, but they're alongside some genuinely beautiful buildings. Wandering around the streets, I realised my friend and I were in danger of becoming architecture critics - this is bad, as we've no idea what we're talking about.

We were there to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in Beckett's infamous Waiting for Godot, which I was wary of because I really wasn't a fan of the script. Here's my review:




Reading Waiting for Godot was – I admit – difficult. Not for nothing has Samuel Beckett's play been described as the one in which nothing happens...twice. Sean Mathias directs an eagerly-awaited production for the Theatre Royal Haymarket that tours this year – one that doesn't fail to live up to its promise.

When I read this seminal piece of theatre history a few months back, I suspected it was the sort of play that has to be seen to be properly understood. Having seen it, I still don't understand. But things are rather more clear. The comedy – gallows humour as it may at times be – is one thing to come out of seeing the thing staged.


But I'm still left with the impression that this play is a bit like candyfloss. You can pull bits away from the edges, working your way deeper and deeper, without actually gaining any extra value from it than what you had on the edges. Eventually – after stripping back the samey outside layer and the samey inner layers, you're left with a slightly baffling core, with which you can do nothing but look at and say “Er, yeah...well, that's it, then”.


But Mathias' production is stronger than my opinion of the writing implies. Leads Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were always going to be successes; the two classically trained actors pull off masterful performances as the vagabond double-act central to the non-action of Beckett's wandering script. Between them they handle a delicate mix of light-hearted buffoonery and existential glumness that is framed by Mathias' decision to make these tramps former thesps, continually re-meeting to wait for Godot. McKellen in particular draws laughter from his pathetic Estragon, seeming to be a child in an old man's body. Stewart's cleverer Vladimir, once his lines allow it, becomes a flustered child minder who is himself unsure of exactly what's going on.




But Simon Callow's Potzo is in danger of stealing the first act from under their noses. If the tramps are one-time actors, Potzo is a one-time circus ringmaster, brandishing his ineffectual whip at Ronald Pickup's hapless shell of a man, Lucky. Callow is all bombast and enforced bonhomie, exuberant in the power he wields. Pickup, meanwhile, loiters at the back until his frantic, manic, frenzied speech that culminates in his utter collapse.


Rather than focus on Beckett's image of humans being born 'astride the grave', ready to fall from cradle to death in a flash, this particular Waiting for Godot presents a humour not entirely expected in the bleakness. As well as that, there's the flicker of human nature that splutters into life every now and then. Our ability to wait and ponder is crucial, as is our tendency to miss opportunities we've spent ages waiting for. Beckett's limbo land makes these abstract things become very real. Language wanders back and forth, via half-remembered stories and events - all seeming to lead up to Potzo's final, reverberating, lines. But all the while, Beckett - as ever – is questioning our definitions of the world around us, what we believe to be true, and our very selves.


That Mathias' production makes this funny, charming yet also bleak is the key to its success. Tramps harking back to the old days of their (financial?) success feels horribly apt in the financial crisis of today.