back
11 comments
Related to Dickens and Collins: anyone who's read works by Dickens (who hasn't) and Collins (usually The Moonstone or The Woman in White) and would enjoy a fictional exploration of their relationship in a somewhat darker, rather macabre setting with Wilkie Collins as an unreliable (opium addicted) narrator might consider reading Dan Simmons' Drood (2009). I had the pleasure of reading it earlier this year.

While the premise is odd, Simmons succeeded in creating a work where it is easy to forget that he is not (by far) a contemporary of Dickens and Collins; his style and narrative in Drood are eerily close to how Collins (and his contemporaries) wrote.

Most readers will know Simmons from his lauded Hyperion Cantos. Drood though, is something else entirely, but impressive nonetheless.

In fact, I discovered Wilkie Collins through (and thoroughly enjoyed) Drood; but now I find my Dickens is lacking and I need to explore beyond A Christmas Carol. But reading Dan Simmons is a delight, whether it’s Hyperion, or his Stephen King-esque works, or my favourite, The Terror, which is something else again.
My Dickens is pretty lacking as well; I vaguely remember not liking A Tale of Two Cities in high school. Bleak House is probably the one on my list. I did read and enjoy the two obvious Wilkie Collins novels (Moonstone and Woman in White) and have also seen the latter in what I think is an underrated musical. I've heard rather mixed things and haven't tried other works.
if you are looking to go deeper into dickens, start with "Great Expectations".
I was going to recommend Drood and am not surprised someone beat me to it. I love a number of Simmons books but was going to skip Drood because I didn't really enjoy the Dickens I read in school but a relative convinced me to give the book a shot and it was well worth it!

For anyone who likes Drood, Simmons has many other excellent novels worth checking out. In addition to the ones already mentioned to others I really enjoyed Illium (scifi take on the Illiad) and The Crook Factory, which is based on a true story about Ernest Hemmingway running a spy ring in Cuba during WW2. He uses actually historical documents in the story which is pretty neat.

I feel privileged to never having read Dickens before my thirtieth or so (I'm not a native English speaker, so avoiding Dickens as a teenager was trivial); it would have given me the wrong impression. His works are great, but require increasingly more cultural baggage to fully enjoy (excepting the Christmas Carol, which is kept in the public consciousness by various factors, including muppets). I can't imagine assigning his novels to minors unless accompanied by lessons providing a lot of context — from historical notes on Victorian society, class struggle, and the meaning of words used daily back then, but obsolete now ('phaeton' is a fun one).
> I can't imagine assigning his novels to minors

Then you shouldn't be teaching them. Learning about a world that's strange to you is one of the great delights of old literature. It's called "education."

Some literature is almost certainly more accessible than others. I'm not sure where Dickens is on that list but it's almost certainly not on the very accessible side, especially at the high school level. Mind you, I'm not sure that some of the more modern novels we did in high school age especially well. But I loved A Picture of Dorian Gray, for example.
Kids read less and less. Assigning them works not likely to be absorbed properly and certainly not enjoyed is tantamount to souring them on reading permanently — something which has been done in many countries for way too long with teachers sticking to 'perennial' classics they (might have) loved, but which no longer enthuse. I stopped reading fiction for years after high school figuring literature just wasn't worth bothering with after get fed ponderous dribble and books not of interest to a young person. I only got back into reading after discovering Douglas Adams, and decades later read anything which grabs my interest, including Dickens and many other classic works.

A good teacher assigns works which lie just outside of the pupil's comfort zone, but not so far out there as to make reading a chore. Want to assign Dickens? Go ahead and read the Christmas Carol at this time of year; it's short and not too hard to grasp, and with enough hooks to go into Victorian society and other related topics. But assign David Copperfield? Great book, but for teenagers way too long for a work that old and removed. A teenager could read four novels that do connect with them in the same time. Sure, some teens might be ready for it, but it's not for everyone.

First, get them to read. Any book. Teach them that not all books will work for them. Skip that step, and you lose most of them as adult readers (the status quo by now).

> get them to read. Any book.

We now have a 20-year long large-sample test : lots of kids (then) read only Harry Potter books. Did they turn into readers of other, better books? I honestly don't know, but I think you need to be open to empirical tests of the hypothesis, whatever the results show.

Your argument works just the same as "my kid hates his vegetables, so he just eats burgers, fries, and ice cream." A good parent strategizes this problem rather than just giving in.

I sat through a 6-hour stage production of Nicholas Nickleby (it had a break for dinner). I liked it, or at least the parts I was awake for.

He had a gift for throwing in minor characters that still stand out in your memory.