Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (novel #225)

Oh, late-remembered, much-forgotten, mouthing, braggart duty, always owed, and seldom paid in any other coin than punishment and wrath, when will mankind begin to know thee! ~ narrative from Martin Chuzzlewit

 

As I near the end of Dickens’ works and read some of his lesser-known stories, it is not surprising that they are not up to his usual standard. This is by far my least favorite. I almost feel unfaithful to a favorite author to give it only 2 ½ stars.

 

It is pretty standard fare in some respects: there is a pompous hypocrite, several misers, an orphan, though not the typical Dickens orphan, a rich uncle, and comical secondary characters, including one who prides himself on being jolly no matter the circumstances.

 

So why did I dislike it? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m getting too familiar with Dickens’ formula, but I don’t think that’s it. Maybe I was offended by his unflattering treatment of the United States, but I hope that isn’t it. (More on that in a minute.) Nor do I think it was Dickens’ notoriously slow start and long character development, which seemed even slower and longer than usual. But I don’t know. Maybe it was a little of all of those. I never really empathized with anyone, though Dickens’ hallmark justice was still satisfying in the end.

 

My Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 Stars

 

 

As far as I know, this is the only Dickens novel partially set in the United States. Young Martin Chuzzlewit sets out for America with a faithful companion to earn his fortune. With one solitary exception, he is met with nothing but frauds, cheats, yokels, and bigots. It was not well received in the United States…shocking! Dickens added a preface first and then a postscript to the preface defending himself. He wrote:

 

The American portion of this story is in no other respect a caricature than as it is an exhibition, for the most part (Mr Bevan excepted), of a ludicrous side, only, of the American character…

 

He doesn’t mention that he had recently visited America in an unsuccessful attempt to get American publishers to honor international copyrights. So, his disdain is not without cause, but he is not without the duplicity and hypocrisy that he is so expert in lampooning in others.

 

I still love the bloke, great writer, but this is not his best work.

 

Oh and…I found this marvelously ironic. With his famous sarcasm in the narrative he quips of British parliamentarians…

 

…it is the custom to use as many words as possible, and express nothing whatever.

 

Quite apropos when ole CD uses such a prudent economy of words himself.

 

Maybe I was a little annoyed by his treatment of the U.S.A. ;)

 

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What's in a Name 2024 Challenge

This is my fourth time taking the What’s in a Name Challenge, hosted by Carolina Book Nook

 

The title of the books must contain or refer to one of the following categories:

 

Double Letters

NFL Team

Natural Disaster

Virtue

Shape

Footwear

 

My choices for these categories:

 

Double Letters

The Screwtape Letters

C. S. Lewis

 

 

NFL Team

The Clan of the Cave Bear

Jean M. Auel

 

 

Natural Disaster

A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge

 

 

Virtue

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

 

 

Shape

Hangover Square: A Tale of DarkestEarl’s Court

Patrick Hamilton

 

 

Footwear

Pippi Longstocking

Astrid Lindgren

 

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2023 Reading Year in Review

2023

I read 21 individual works: 11 novels/novellas; one Sherlock Holmes short story;  one Shakespearean comedy; one biography; three other works of non-fiction; three Christmas reads; and The Bible: 1 Corinthians thru The Revelation.

 

 

Novels:

Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens

Daphnis and Chloe by Longus

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers

Killing Floor (Jack Reacher series #1) by Lee Child

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

 

 

Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb

 

 

Shakespeare Comedy:

The Taming of the Shrew

 

 

Biography:

James Madison: A Biography by Ralph Ketcham

 

 

Non-Fiction:

Thru the Bible: Volume 5 by J. Vernon McGee

Doing Life with Your Adult Children by Jim Burns

The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

 

 

Christmas reads:

A Letter from Santa by Mark Twain

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

Christmas Bells, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

 

I completed two Reading Challenges:

What’s in a Name? 2023

A Literary Christmas 2023

 

 

And finally, I read 2 books for The Classics Club, thus completing Round III, and I read another 5 for Round IV.

 

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Christmas Tales 2023

The Magi honored the Christ child with three gifts. 

In honor of the magi, I read three Christmas tales each December. My Christmas reads are also part of A Literary Christmas – sponsored by In the Bookcase 

 

 

 

A Letter from Santa Claus by Mark Twain

A letter Twain wrote to his three-year-old daughter Suzie. Writing as Santa he explains that he got her and her sister’s letters and that he would fulfill all he could. He directs Suzie to take certain actions, to which he will respond, all to keep the fantasy of Santa alive for his daughter. It is of course very sweet, with a bit of Twain’s humor coming out in Santa. 

 

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

As you would expect from the creator of Peter Rabbit, this is a sweet tale with anthropomorphized animals, kindly but sometimes inept humans, and a happy ending. The only surprise was the eventual peace and cooperation between the tailor’s cat, Simpkin, and the mice. It is beautifully illustrated by Potter.

 

Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A poem, which is now the carol we know as I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. It is one of my favorite carols, though it is absolutely essential to sing the final two stanzas (as opposed to the practice of picking a couple stanzas at random). Some hymn books do not include all seven stanzas, but I believe they always include the final two, and as I say, you cannot omit those two.

Wadsworth wrote it as the American Civil War raged. It is his lament that there was no peace on earth. I think we can relate. He was near despair, and then…

 

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

“God is not Dead; nor doth he sleep!

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail

With peace on Earth, good-will to men!”

 

 

 

Merry Christmas

          ~ The Wanderer

 

May you be blessed with

the spirit of the season, which is Peace,

the gladness of the season, which is Hope,

and the heart of the season, which is Love

 

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A Literary Christmas 2023

Brought to you by In the Bookcase

 

 

The Rules are simple – pick your Christmas reads for 2023, write a blog post about them, and link back to In the Bookcase.

 

I honor of the Magi, who brought the Christ child three gifts, I read three Christmas tales each December. This year I will be reading:

 

A Letter from Santa Claus by Mark Twain

 

Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(now more commonly known as I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day)

 

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

 

 

Have a Blessed Christmas

The Wanderer

 

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Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm (novel #224)

Zuleika Dobson, Or an Oxford Love Story by Max Beerbohm

 

Death cancels all engagements. ~ the Duke of Dorsett to Zuleika

 

This will be brief; I didn’t like this novel.

 

I am attempting to follow John Updike’s first rule of literary criticism: “Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.”

 

In Beerbohm’s own words, he did not see this work as a novel but rather "the work of a leisurely essayist amusing himself with a narrative idea.” Hopefully, he succeeded in that.

 

The title character, who, though “not strictly beautiful” held universal allure over the heart and mind of any young man she met, looks forward to visiting her grandfather at Oxford…

 

…for it was youth’s homage that she loved best – this city of youths was a toy after her own heart.

 

She’s an instant sensation, literally a femme fatale, inspiring thoughts of suicide to scores of Oxford undergraduates, each of whom despairs of life if their love is not reciprocated.

 

That’s really about it. It’s a farce. I found the characters utterly unbelievable, ridiculous, or contemptuous in Zuleika’s case. Hopefully, Beerbohm achieved his purpose and amused himself. My score below is not a criticism, merely a measure of my enjoyment.

 

 

My Rating: 2 ½ out of 5 Stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the title beginning with Q, X, or Z category in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge, and with it, I’ve completed the challenge.

 

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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (novel #223)

Here I was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a master intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement the one and only actually great man in that whole British world…

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court was originally titled A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. It is a fantasy satire, and I would also say Sci-Fi since it involves time travel. The eponymous narrator, mechanical engineer Hank Morgan, is transported from 1879 Connecticut to sixth-century England due to a heavy blow to his head.

 

It takes Hank a while to get his bearings and realize what has happened to him. He is quickly arrested and sentenced to death, but he uses his superior knowledge of science and history to convince Arthur and company that he is a powerful wizard. Merlin challenges him, but Hank always manages to outsmart the charlatan wizard.

 

Hank embraces his reputation, earns a position of authority in Arthur’s government, and sets out to improve the nation of “intellectual moles” he finds himself among.

 

…to banish oppression from this land and restore to all its people their stolen rights and manhood without disobliging anybody.

 

His aspirations are not merely scientific. Hank intends to end what, to his 19th-century mind, were outdated societal norms of serfdom, aristocracy, monarchy, judicial system, and the Catholic Church.

 

I was very happy. Things were working steadily toward a secretly longed-for point. You see, I had two schemes in my head which were the vastest of all my projects. The one was to overthrow the Catholic Church and set up the Protestant faith on its ruins – not as an Established Church, but a go-as-you-please one; and the other project was to get a decree issued by and by, commanding that upon Arthur’s death unlimited suffrage should be introduced, and given to men and women alike – at any rate to all men, wise or unwise, and to all mothers who at middle age should be found to know nearly as much as their sons at twenty-one.

 

As one would expect from Twain, there are moments of subtle and sublime humor. In much of the book, Hank and Arthur are traveling the realm incognito, and Hank, on several occasions, has great difficulty in coaching the king on how to act as a simple peasant.

 

The King looked puzzled – he wasn’t a very heavy weight intellectually. His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

 

Meanwhile, there is intrigue in King Arthur’s Court and treachery. There is a great contest between Hank and his few minions against the entrenched traditions of Knight Errantry, with a bit of pot-stirring by Merlin. I’ll spare the spoiler of how it ends.

 

Overall, I was disappointed. I’ve loved everything that I’ve read by Twain and wanted to read this for decades. I expected hilarious dialogue and farcical circumstances but found only a few bits to snicker at. But it wasn’t merely the doom of high expectations. I felt that Hank, and by proxy Twain, held humanity in contempt.

 

But finally it occurred to me all of a sudden that these animals didn’t reason; that they never put this and that together…

 

Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.

 

And yeah, there are times when I feel that way, but in this novel, that seems to be the prevalent theme. Not a fan.

 

Still, it was a read I needed to check off the list. I’m glad I read it, glad I’m done.

  

My Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 Stars

 

 

This novel satisfies the Chess Piece category in the What’s in a Name 2023 Challenge.

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