Head Butler - Books

Bleak House

Charles Dickens

Sunday nights between nine and ten are sacred. We do not answer the phone. We do not speak. We do not even surf during commercials. "Law and Order: Criminal Intent" is on, starring Vincent D'Onofrio, and we are worshipping at the Church of Vincent. The way he cocks his head, his delight in esoteric knowledge, his ever-present fear that he will, like his mother, be overtaken by madness --- for us, Vincent is the dream actor for the role of Bobby Goren, the brainiest detective on TV.

This winter, we have abandoned Vincent. (Well, postponed. We'll catch him in re-runs.) The BBC has made a brilliant mini-series from 'Bleak House' --- arguably the most satisfying of all novels by Charles Dickens --- and, these cold nights at nine, we have turned our rapt attention to PBS. With good reason. Of all the distinguished adaptations of classic English novels, this is among the greatest. Writing, directing, pacing: this eight-hour series never falters. And the casting! Would you have chosen Gillian Anderson as the wretchedly unhappy Lady Dedlock? Well, she's astonishingly moving.

For those who haven't read the novel, it's thick. But a page-turner. It has the speed of journalism. And the indignation --- here, Dickens takes aim at two fat targets: the absurd Chancery Court and the cruel fate of poor children in London. And then there is the overriding story line, which is a mystery --- a whodunnit.

I read "Bleak House' decades ago, when I dreamed of becoming a professor and putting kids through their paces analyzing books like this, and I fondly remember the two days I spent holed up with it. What was the secret that Lady Dedlock carried? Why was Tulkinghorn, the slick, dreadful lawyer, so eager to expose her? Onward I read, while the inheritance lawsuit --- Jarndyce and Jarndyce --- made its plodding way through the court, destroying so many lives in the process that it seemed no good could come of it for the young couple in love that hoped someday to be made rich by it.

The great novelist Vladimir Nabokov, in his Lectures on Literature, devotes a brilliant chapter to 'Bleak House.' His analysis is acute and detailed; if you want to be dazzled, read the book (or watch the mini-series) and then read it. You'll see levels you could not imagine on your own.

What you can get on your own is plenty --- Dickens writes in a clear, cold rage, which always purifies good writing. On the matter of the Court, he wrote from experience: In 1844, he filed suit over the disputed copyright to 'A Christmas Carol.' His opponents declared bankruptcy; although Dickens 'won,' court costs wiped out his victory. As for his passion for reform, you will never forget dear Mr.Jarndyce's words after the death of poor little Jo: "Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day. "

Orwell, no slouch when it came to honest indignation, wrote a terrific essay on Dickens. The man he describes at the end of that essay is very much the Dickens of 'Bleak House' --- and very much an author you wish to know better, either by reading or viewing. Here you go:

When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. I feel this very strongly with Swift, with Defoe, with Fielding, Stendhal, Thackeray, Flaubert, though in several cases I do not know what these people looked like and do not want to know. What one sees is the face that the writer ought to have. Well, in the case of Dickens I see a face that is not quite the face of Dickens's photographs, though it resembles it. It is the face of a man of about forty, with a small beard and a high colour. He is laughing, with a touch of anger in his laughter, but no triumph, no malignity. It is the face of a man who is always fighting against something, but who fights in the open and is not frightened, the face of a man who is generously angry — in other words, of a nineteenth-century liberal, a free intelligence, a type hated with equal hatred by all the smelly little orthodoxies which are now contending for our souls.

Inspired? Then read 'Bleak House' next. Or find eight hours to watch it. And get inspired all over again.

--- by Jesse Kornbluth, for HeadButler.com

To order the novel of 'Bleak House' from Amazon.com, click here.

To order the DVD of 'Bleak House' from Amazon.com, click here.

To order Nabokov's 'Lectures on Literature' from Amazon.com, click here.