Copperfield Update; Character Names

Good gracious, it's been a week since my last post! I'd better write something or you'll all forget who I am. I had barely caught up after being on vacation, when my sister and nephews arrived for a wonderful week's visit. She lives across the country from me, so we don't get to hang out as much as we'd like. I wish she'd move to Oregon.

Tonight I'm going to attempt to combine a Weekly Geeks assignment and a reading update on David Copperfield.

Care challenged me to read 30-50 pages last week, and I did read 50. This week I've read about three. The exciting thing is that Uriah Heap has appeared! Uriah Heap is a characters whose name I've heard practically all my life, and I never knew who he was. I still don't really know who he is--he's supposed to be a bad guy, but he seems kind of okay so far. Unusual, for Dickens--usually the bad guys are pretty transparently despicable. And, with a name like Uriah...

Character names are this week's Weekly Geeks topic, so I'm going to write a bit about the names in David Copperfield. First of all, the book is fiction but autobiographical in many ways, and many people have thought that Dickens purposefully reversed his initials to create David's. According to the introduction of the edition I'm reading, Dickens was surprised when this was pointed out to him. In fact, the main character's name was originally Thomas Mag. Both David and Thomas were fairly common names in the mid-twentieth century when Dickens was writing this novel, so maybe he was going for a John Doe type of name.

But what about Uriah? I don't think Dickens was aiming for a name that meant "God is my light." Maybe he was looking for a generally unpopular name: Uriah's never been in the top 1000 names, even in the nineteenth century.

Two of the maternal figures in the story--David's mother, and his nurse (Pegotty) are named Clara. In this case, I'm sure Dickens was going for the meaning of the name: bright and clear. Nothing was more clear to poor David than the love his mother and nurse held for him, even when circumstances prevented them from fully expressing it.

That's all the names I have time for, and as far as a favorite character name in a book, I really don't have any that I can think of. The other thing about names I want to say is that, like Mr. Dickens, I've changed several character names in my book--some, more than once! I started off wanting very common names for all my characters but I realized it was too confusing, plus I had too many J and B names. So, John became Sean; Jim became Ian; Jerry became Arnie; Bill became Nate; Ben (named long before my son was born) became Ken but he's going to be something different, I'm considering Kip for him. When I talk to my husband about the plot sometimes he's mystified because I've changed the names since he last read it. I wonder if any other famous characters, besides David Copperfield, were first conceived of with different names.

TSS: Dickens vs. The Boy

Have you entered my giveaway of Ranger's Apprentice? I read chapter one this morning and even though I haven't read any of the other books, I could jump into this one easily. Drawing will be Tuesday. Enter here!

My reading of David Copperfield has had a major slowdown these past couple of weeks (last Sunday I was too busy to even write a Sunday Salon post). I'm now on page 200, which means I've read a whopping 30 pages since two weeks ago.

I'm in an awkward situation, you see. My dear, sweet 12-year-old boy has now decided that he's not as interested in dragons and magic anymore. He wants realistic contemporary fiction, preferably, as I believe I've mentioned in a previous post, with skateboarding.

Here's the thing: Fantasy that's appropriate for a pre-teen boy? Our library's shelves are practically exploding with them. We have reading lists and brochures and librarians who have been asked the "I finished Harry Potter, now what?" question for years. It's been ages since I've felt the need to pre-read Ben's books.

Realistic fiction appropriate for a pre-teen boy--with skateboarding, even--is there, too. We've found some great ones. But you can't just pull it off the shelf and hand it over, or even go by reviews online. Take Nick Hornby's YA novel, Slam. No explicit sex or anything R-rated, and it has skateboarding in it, but it's a book about a 15-year old who gets his girlfriend pregnant. Teen pregnancy...let's just say, it isn't in my son's top 1000 topics of interest right now, and I'd like to keep it that way for another year or two. As soon as he gets his first girlfriend, though, Slam will be back on our bookshelves immediately.

Paranoid Park and Sk8terboy are similarly not quite the right fit for my boy, for different reasons (PP is pretty gruesome and because it clearly takes place in our city, I feel like the lines between fiction and fact will be worrisome for Ben) and Sk8erboy is basically a girl book with a skateboarder as romantic interest.

Professional skateboarder Rodney Mullens has an autobiography out. Mullens seems like a decent guy, but who hands over a celebrity memoir to their 12 year old without reading it, too? So far it's been fodder for discussion about peer pressure, male anorexia, and the difference between dedication to an activity and obsession with it. I'm skimming like mad to keep ahead of the boy. I'm happy for him to be considering these ideas, but not without my input.

All this in the way of making excuses for myself. I haven't been reading my Dickens because nobody keeps handing it to me and asking if I've decided yet whether he can read it.

TSS: Still Dickensing Along

As I start this entry it's about 40 minutes before Sunday, when I begin the twelfth anniversary of my entry into motherhood. I've been reliving labor today as I attempt to clean my house in time for a flock of boys to mess it up again. Tomorrow night at this time that same flock will labor at not falling asleep on my sons' bedroom floor. Compared to what I went through 12 years ago? Piece of cake. Delicious homemade yellow cake, in fact, that my husband is making right now and that Ben intends to ruin decorate tomorrow by covering it with Gummy Worms and Sour Patch Kids.

Plugging along through David Copperfield, I'm on page 170, having just finished Chapter 11: I begin Life on my own Account, and don't like it. Poor David has now been orphaned (I'm assuming everyone knows this? That's got to be as much of a spoiler as telling you Darth Vader is Luke's father. Right?) and is working in a warehouse in London.

What I loved this week: The amazing ending to the chapter in which David's mother and baby brother have died unexpectedly while he was away at boarding school, leaving him an orphan in the care of his nasty stepfather.

From the moment of my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the parlour. . . . It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm, untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.
The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had been, hushed for ever on her bosom.

Doesn't that just break your heart? Every mom lives with the knowledge that her early death would devastate her children beyond her comprehension. And here's David, who hasn't lived with his mother for quite some time--and yet her death clearly marks the death of his innocence.

What I don't love: It's hard for me to pinpoint David's age at any given time. On page 154 he finally refers to himself as being ten years old, so now I know, but before that I was mystified. He seems so young in some scenes, and then refers to being smitten with a girl. I didn't think boys as young as ten got smitten with girls? Certainly my boys don't. But I'm willing to roll with it. I just want Dickens to be sure I understand how much time is passing, so I'll know when dear David hits puberty.

More to love: Some of Dickens' characters are hilarious and he really makes you see them, through their dress and their actions. Take good old Mr. Barkis. He's courting David's beloved nurse, Peggotty, but is too shy to speak more than one repetitive sentence to her. One evening he stops by with a bundle of oranges for her, but instead of giving them to her he just sets them down and leaves.

After that occasion he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put behind the door, and left there. These offerings of affection were of a most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double set of pigs' trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes, a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.

So, next time someone presents you with one of those gifts that makes you go, "Huh?" you can say, "Oh, how Dickensonian of you! Thank you!" and be grateful it isn't a leg of pickled pork. Unless of course it is a leg of pickled pork, in which case, be grateful it's not the trotters.

TSS: Let the Dickens Begin

So, I started David Copperfield, and it's good! I knew it'd be good, of course. But I expected it to be good as in, "Look at me reading classic literature" good, and was pleasantly surprised to find it "Well...just one more chapter before I go to sleep" good. I'm on Chapter 9, page 123.

What I love: the way Dickens manages to give us a child's perspective with an adult voice.

I was shown up to a nice little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door. Very
cold I was, I know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before a large
fire down-stairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin's bed, pull the
Dolphin's blankets round my head, and go to sleep.

I keep thinking of Matthew Kneale's When We Were Romans, whose childlike narrative voice has received mixed reader reviews. Dickens successfully recreates the childish perspective--the thought, for example, that a dolphin inhabits a room because the word was printed on the door--but from the vantage point of an adult.

What else I like: When Dickens wants to pull the reader in to the character's sensory world, he shifts to present tense, as if to slip the reader inside his very memory.:

How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung
about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair
fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom,
with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the
breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their
fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor.

What I don't like: the charicatured quality of some of the characters and their dialogue. It makes me think, "No one would ever say something like that!" and then, "Oh, yeah. He's doing that on purpose. It's satire." I have a hard enough time with satire in modern times; much of the humor in 19th century satire has probably whizzed right over my shoulder and is bouncing off my living room walls like a superball even now.

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I took my son to the indoor skateboard park on Saturday morning and I couldn't quite see myself absorbed in Dickens with the Under-14 dudes zipping past and their parents discussing their canceled-due-to-snow winter break plans and the quality of the powder on Mt. Hood, so I brought Cracked Up to Be along with me instead. It's a new YA novel for older teens, with kind of a mystery running through it; it was hard to put down. Even for the sake of Dickens. So, with about 10 pages left to go this morning after reading it in the shower (just about), I took it to church with me this morning because I had to find out how it ended.

You know those bumper stickers that say, "My other car is a Porsche?" When I was reading Cracked Up to Be between services at church I wanted to be wearing a sign that said, "The other book I'm reading is Charles Dickens." Maybe I'll make myself a t-shirt.

David Copperfield

I've picked a Dickens book to read: it will be David Copperfield. Having read 3 pages of the introduction (by somebody else) at the front of my edition, I'm intrigued by the fact that it's somewhat autobiographical. I'm going to read it slowly, with other more contemporary (and diverse!) books in between, which may or may not be a good idea. I'll probably post about it as I go, rather than doing a review at the end. Anyone want to read along with me and discuss?