Why I Hate Dickens

When I was quite young my grandmother handed me the above set of Dickens. She had been the head of the Socialist Party in New York and ran for Senate and NY State Treasurer. Never won. Yet I had to read Dickens so that understood the problems of the underclass. Now at the time I did not know that I was the underclass but by reading Dickens I was to see that there were those who were oppressed by the rich. Kind of the Occupy folks of today, but they are not really underclass.

Now I read all of these, and trying to see how they related to New York in the early 1950s was a bit of a stretch. You see Dickens understood the British class society, and we in the US, at least then, had a somewhat classless society. Or at least none of us saw any limitations on what we could achieve. For Dickens and the Brits class and your position in society defined your very existence. For me it made no sense. Thus book by book I read understanding that this world made no sense and even if it did as an American I could change it, I was not set in concrete. After many conversations even my grandmother was a believer.

I never made my grand children read this nonsense, yes nonsense. And today is Dickens' 200th anniversary of his birth. Perhaps for some he presents a world of meaning but for others he presents a planet on which we have no knowledge and we would never even want to understand it if we did. Thus unlike so many fans of the man, I felt he was the low point of my youth.