E-Book Overview
With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of classics such as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. As "his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels," Smiley's Charles Dickens is at once a sensitive profile of the great master and a fascinating meditation on the writing life. Smiley evokes Dickens as he might have seemed to his contemporaries: convivial, astute, boundlessly energetic-and lionized. As she makes clear, Dickens not only led the action-packed life of a prolific writer, editor, and family man but, balancing the artistic and the commercial in his work, he also consciously sustained his status as one of the first modern "celebrities." Charles Dickens offers brilliant interpretations of almost all the major works, an exploration of his narrative techniques and his innovative voice and themes, and a reflection on how his richly varied lower-class cameos sprang from an experience and passion more personal than his public knew. Jane Smiley's own "demon narrative intelligence" (The Boston Globe) touches, too, on controversial details that include Dickens's obsession with money and squabbles with publishers, his unhappy marriage, and the rumors of an affair. Here is a fresh look at the dazzling personality of a verbal magician and the fascinating times behind the classics we read in school and continue to enjoy today.
E-Book Content
Charles Dickens ⁄ : Larry McMurtry on Crazy Horse Edmund White on Marcel Proust . Peter Gay on Mozart . Jonathan Spence on Mao Zedong Edna O’Brien on James Joyce . Douglas Brinkley on Rosa Parks Garry Wills on Saint Augustine Elizabeth Hardwick on Herman Melville Louis Auchincloss on Woodrow Wilson . Mary Gordon on Joan of Arc Sherwin B. Nuland on Leonardo da Vinci . Carol Shields on Jane Austen Karen Armstrong on the Buddha . R. W. B. Lewis on Dante Nigel Nicolson on Virginia Woolf Francine du Plessix Gray on Simone Weil Patricia Bosworth on Marlon Brando Wayne Koestenbaum on Andy Warhol Paul Johnson on Napoleon . Thomas Cahill on Pope John XXIII Marshall Frady on Martin Luther King, Jr. : John Keegan on Winston Churchill . Roy Blount, Jr., on Robert E. Lee David Quammen on Charles Darwin Bobbie Ann Mason on Elvis Presley . James Gleick on Isaac Newton Kathryn Harrison on Saint Thérèse of Lisieux Robert V. Remini on Joseph Smith . Hilton Als on James Baldwin Ada Louise Huxtable on Frank Lloyd Wright Thomas Keneally on Abraham Lincoln Martin E. Marty on Martin Luther Simon Schama on Oliver Cromwell : Charles Dickens A Penguin Life ⁄ This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Charles Dickens A Viking Book / published by arrangement with the author All rights reserved. Copyright © 2002 by Jane Smiley. This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New Y