I Can't Even...

 

Crazy David Copperfield Notes

"Never...be mean in anything, never be false; never be cruel.  Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you."  Aunt Betsey to David Copperfield

Because I'm nothing if not scattered these days,  I've picked up and put down more books than I've read this year.  SO annoying!  In addition to being book fickle, I've also been blog paralyzed on trying to write about David Copperfield.  I'm over-thinking, over-planning, over-analyzing, and just plain talking myself down about what I could possibly have to say about such a classic.  My reaction to the book felt a bit under-whelming, probably because I had expected to adore it, and I didn't.   I liked it, but I've enjoyed other Dickens works more. The scope of the novel was sometimes so overwhelming that I feel sure I missed a lot.  Even with all the note-taking, I don't know that I followed all of the character and plot developments.

I can't even process it all, much less blog about it, so all I'm gonna say is this:  the characters, places, and time of the story felt so very real to me that I began to feel like the events and people were actual memories rather than just something I had read. Maybe that's what makes a novel a Classic.  That we, the children of the 20th century living in a seemingly disposable world of such rapid change, can pick up a novel set in a distant place and time and suddenly become part of that time and place and have it become so much a part of us that sometimes even a single sentence can alter the course of our lives.  How lucky we are to have access to such an accumulated wealth of wisdom.  Maybe instead of requiring make-overs and sound bites from our politicians, we should just require that they read...broadly and often.

David Zhivago and Yuri Copperfield

photo by Anna Reavis

"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see." John Burroughs

 

I’m sure some of my blogging friends think I’ve fallen prey to the dragons at the edge of the world, but I promise I have been reading.  I just haven’t been finishing anything.  For some ungodly reason back in December, I thought it would be a good idea to read David Copperfield to myself concurrently with reading Doctor Zhivago aloud with Ken...because the plethora of characters in either of these novels individually wasn’t challenging enough, I guess. 

Shortly into this literary equivalent of scaling two sheer granite facades at the same time, one with one half of my body and the other with the other half, I realized I would have to study character maps and make profuse notes on each novel to maintain some semblance of clarity.  (This was soon after I imagined David Copperfield heading toward Yuriatin to help Lara hide after she shot Mr. Murdstone.)    So, as if the reading of these two door stops wasn’t enough of a time suck, now there were the notes to make.  Then I got the flu.  Then Ken went into atrial fibrillation for a week and ended up in the hospital.  Let me just say that sickness and hospital stays do not, in fact, lend themselves to reading.  I spent a lot of time staring out the window like someone in need of a lobotomy.  Or a strait-jacket. 

And now we are both on the mend so it's time to head back to London to see how Pasha is getting along with Mr Spendlow.  One day I will finish these books and actually write about them.  In the meantime, I’ll just complete novels vicariously by reading book blogs at work.  (That is NOT true, Mark.  I do not read book blogs at work.  I only work prodigiously on insurance matters at work.  Except at lunch.  At lunch I download porn.)