"Dickens! — That strange word, that name of names . . ." The Last Dickens, p. 32
As promised, we'll be going through Matthew Pearl's new novel this week. The book starts off, improbably, with an arrest, an escape, and a bloody death in India in 1870. Pearl's language here is a bit stiff, almost cursory, and the narrative a bit rushed, and one is just starting to wonder what this is all about when suddenly, one of the British soldiers asks out of nowhere, "But won't we, if Dickens, I mean . . ."
And presto, we're in Boston, where the hunt is on for a mysterious bundle of papers — the last installment of Edwin Drood that Dickens wrote before he died, as it turns out. In the next four chapters, there's another death, two robberies (or rather, one robbery and one attempted robbery), and what looks like the beginning of a romance. And a few names that Dickens would have loved, like Montague Midges and Sylvanus Bendall.
"Sylvanus Bendall was a different breed. He welcomed risk. He opened the door and invited risk in, taking its coat and brushing its boots and serving it tea in his living room." p. 23
The pace is certainly breakneck, but I like it. It pulls you into the story and sweeps you breathlessly along, and the prose loosens up and begins to flow — and the really cool thing is that it's an adventure story about publishing, of all things. Who knew the American publishing industry of 1870 was such a jungle? Some of the publishers even have their own mercenaries (with the marvelous name of "Bookaneers"!) who hang out at docks and try to swipe manuscripts coming from England. And of course "the last Dickens" is an invaluable prize, both for these pirates and for the ordinary men and women on the docks who would love to get their hands on it.
"A poetic brickmaker noted that he had attended all of Dickens's public readings at the Tremont Temple in Boston two and a half years earlier, waiting in line when it was so cold the mercury was clean out of sight. . . . A mechanic perched near the corpse announced he had read Dickens's David Copperfield four times, but this was eclipsed by six! eight! and nine! from others. One old man began to cry and it seemed to be for the accident victim's sad fate, until he whispered, 'Poor dear old Dickens, noble Dickens.'" p. 24
And they try to tell us today that literature isn't for the masses and books need to be dumbed down. Pffft.
That's chapters 1-5. More tomorrow!
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