If Dickens were alive today he would be...
a.) Writing The Wire.
b.) Starring in The Wire.
C.) Crying because he was so old and in so much pain and constantly asking questions about the modern world, so much so that it earned him the nickname 'The Why Bird'. *
Well, thanks to modern physics, we now know that the answer to the above question is all three. This newfound knowledge has led me to set myself the challenge of reading the complete works of Dickens. **
You know - Charles Dickens: copied his look off Charles Darwin, London-based, always played by Simon Callow. This literary voyage shall begin with Bleak House. A cursory glance at page one, already informs me that it's pretty bleak. Whilst I am reading Bleak House, if honest, I suspect I'll secretly be wishing that I was doing something else like being on the internet, flaneuring, smooching or talking, however I have given myself a full year in order to complete this challenge, which does come with certain stipulations (see second footnote).
And this kinda got me to thinking (for those of you that don't know, that is a parody of the way that Carrie Bradshaw, from Sex in the City, writes...we are similar in looks and style, btw, if I was the Samantha Jones character in the show, the neo-feminist/slag, depending on your politics, then at this point I would say something like, "Well, I don't know about Dick-ens, but I do know about Dicks-out", before raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow and downing a pink Gin).
The point is, I find reading novels has become increasingly harder as the amount of possible things I could be doing increases. It takes a certain amount of discipline to, let's call it 'read consciously'. Now, this is where this blog becomes, finally interesting because, according to a nice psychologist called Barry Schwartz, more choice in modern life has not made us freer and happier but more paralysed and dissatisfied...I'm paraphrasing (not to be confused with paragliding). Moreover, 'multiple choice' serves only to raise our expectations, which ultimately leads to disappointment, ergo - we are no happier than our forefathers (I only have one).
In conclusion: bring on the Victorian gloom. Whoooop!
* 'Why Bird' was a woodpecker puppet thing from a children's television programme called Playdays and then later Playbus. It was called this because it asked a lot of questions.
**He wrote about 24 novels...I'm not going to read them ALL, because some of them are non-fiction, one of 'em doesn't even have an ending (WTF!) and some of them look guff. I'm going to read all the main ones. Oh, yeah - and I'm allowed to give up at anytime.
