Reading: Our Mutual Friend

I have been reading Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens for the last 27 years. You'll say I'm exaggerating, but seriously: every time I try to think back to a reading memory, it's me and 800+ pages of people who skim the Thames for dead bodies from which to pilfer.

Some misconceptions, first, to clear up about Little Chuckie Dickens:

• He didn't get paid by the word. It's fun to gripe about in 11th grade English when you're wading your way through Great Expectations and you want to sound like you know something about literature -- but it's just not true. He wasn't paid by the word; he was paid by the installment. And fine: you say tomato, I say tomahto.
  
  
• Dickens wasn't meant to be read in one sitting. He wrote serially. The best way to read Dickens is probably in the installments they were published as. One of the reasons Zach and I won't watch 24 is because we tried to catch up on season 1 via DVD and found it all too thrilling. First, there were no commercials; then, there was nothing stopping us from watching five episodes in a row. "I can't do this anymore," said Zach, shakily wiping the film of sweat that had appeared on his forehead. "He's gonna have to save the world without us." It's similar, though with less Kiefer, with Dickens. Each installment is an episode, so when you try to read the whole thing is a few sittings, you'll start to notice some of the weaknesses of serial writing. The writing and storytelling can seem baggy and unstructured -- and in some cases they are. Reading and enjoying Dickens means developing a sense of patience.
  
  
• Dickens is both as great and as frustrating as everyone has told you. I'm not saying that settling down with Bleak House or Dombey and Son won't take you eleventy one years to finish, or that you won't find yourself reading anything other than Dickens in the middle just to give yourself a mini-reprieve (ask me anything about Honey Nut Cheerios -- anything). But give him a chance and he'll charm you, make you laugh out loud, make you fall in and out of love, frighten you, overwhelm you, and make you remember why you love reading. He's not fortified with 9 vitamins and iron, though. But that's not his fault.
  

This is the last conversation Zach and I had about Our Mutual Friend:

MIKE: I don't know. I think the little dwarf girl, Fanny Cleaver, who calls herself Jenny Wren, is up to no good.
ZACH: If I leave you, please know that it's your books that drove me away.
MIKE: She makes clothes and funeral shrouds for dolls.
ZACH: Tell the kids...tell them I love them. I'm off for a pack of cigarettes.
MIKE: Oh, she's also a hunchback.