About Me

Friday 28 November 2008

Fallow Fields

That's my blog, fallow as the empty field. Maybe I'll grow some fine corn and tasty broccoli next year. Meanwhile, I'm feeling sorry for myself with a nasty virus, hopefully on its way out, with not much going on apart from reading Little Dorrit from end-to-end in bed.

Dickens was a genius. A totally friggin' bonkers genius but still a genius. Sentiment and social satire flowed with seeming ease from the end of his pen, though he worked really hard revising all his manuscripts. I once read the opening page of his manuscript from David Copperfield in the Bleak House Museum in Broadstairs, which was full of scribbly crossings out and overwriting. He was master of the serial form too and published his novels in installments, keeping the public on tenterhooks with teases and cliff-hangers.

Apparently, today's public are finding the televised version of Little Dorrit hard going. More fool them and their tiny attention spans and closed-up little hearts.