Some Words

I finished David Copperfield (Modern Library Classics)
tonight. It was an odd experience. Because I have been reading it in installments delivered to my email, and because those installments totaled over 400, I feel like I might have some small indication of what it was like to read it when it first came out. I grant that there were larger chunks when it was first published, but it was strung out over a similar length of time.

When reading Dickens slowly like this, I find that the sins of which he is accused, the overly repetitious characterization and his general loquaciousness seem to fall away. You need a refresher on some of the charaters sometimes, and by the end, David is like an old friend saying goodbye. Maybe not your best friend, but someone you meet for coffee from time to time and catch up on the latest with him. And it is a bit of a one sided conversation, but you put up with it because you always have.