What do you guys think of Dickens? I rarely see him discussed here...

What do you guys think of Dickens? I rarely see him discussed here. I think Gass once said that Dickens is the only writer who could compete with Joyce and Shakespeare stylistically.

Gass is a crazy person. Dickens is cool. Read Bleak House and a Christmas Carol when it's in season

everyone on this board says he sucks (more specifically, that his works are dry and he's a bore)

i want to give bleak house a go

He's prob the most influential writer in Eng Lit post Shakespeare.

English lit is shit desu

I usually agree with Gass but that's just bonkers.

It'd be pretty uncontroversial in scholarly circles.. Its bonkers here because we dont read and have ADD. This time about a year ago Veeky Forums thought Italo Calvino was comparable with Shakespeare and Joyce. Couple of years ago it was obscure Japnese writers we had heard referenced in anime or tentacle porn or something

lmao good post

I like him but

>Dickens is the only writer who could compete with Joyce and Shakespeare stylistically
no

Bleak House is incredible. I took a course on Victorian Lit in uni and it ended being a study of just Bleak House for the entire semester. So richly detailed. I think a lot of people equate a novel having ""obvious"" themes with a lack of any depth period. Havent read any more Dickens since then but hopefully I'll crack into Great Expectations or David Copperfield sometime soon.

Dickens is, if anything, heavily underrated these days because people first encounter his work by being forced to study it in primary school. Not only does this kill the reading experience for most, it also paints him as an established institution - completely undercutting the true, revolutionary nature of his themes and relationship with Victorian culture.

Hard times was worth a read.

I think he's great. A Tale of Two Cities is a very nice read for example

I suppose the main criticism is that it's sometimes very obvious that he got paid by the word - it can be very dense at times.

>Dickens is the only writer who could compete with Joyce and Shakespeare stylistically

Joyce doesn't belong in the same sentence as Shakespeare

>He ain't English, he can't write as good as old Willy.

No one is comparable to Shakespeare not even Joyce

A bit stupid to compare Joyce and Shakespeare anyway.

open gun insert mouth

I posted repeatedly early this year about nicholas nickleby being boring awful shit where nothing happens and he drags out the story for money.

I think Dickens worship is the epitome of the rapidly increasing artfaggotry of literature, along with Shakespeare worship.

Dickens wrote serialised in magazine stories for almost illiterate kids back in the 19th century. Fine, great. But now in 2016 hes shoved in your face and talked about as if you need 10 PhDs to appreciate him. How dare you dislike him!

Similarly with Shakespeare but many magnitudes more absurd. He wrote plays for illiterate peasants with less formal education than 7 year olds today. But now the "educated" opinion is that you need to study each play for 50 years before you can appreciate anything.

Not sure if serious...

Its all true.

Good point desu. I think it was June 2015 when this whole 'Shakespeare' meme started - he'd actually been out of print for 352 years! Not many people realize this but look it up. The Dickens meme actually started earlier this year with the Netflix version of Tale of Two Cities. Before that Dickens had been out of print since 1897.

Im not saying that they started beocming popular recently. But nobody in shakespeares time was telling anyone else that an English degree was necessary to appreciate Shakespeare or that the secrets of the universe were in his plays.

>in primary school
Fuck man, what kind of primary school did you go to? We had to read Great Expectations in secondary, but even that was beyond the syllabus.

I read it (by own choice) in primary school in Sweden. I remember I would show a classmate the descriptions of how badly the orphans were treated and we would laugh edgily.

Dickens is okay, he can't hold a candle to Thackeray or George Elliott or even Trollope.

My great-grandfather thought he was a pleb.