Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Thursday, May 22, 2003
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Great Expectations
I've seen so many film versions of Dickens' Great Expectations that I'm ashamed to admit that until now I've never read it! Sure, I know the story. But somehow I managed to get through high school, college and graduate school without enjoying this obvious classic. Admittedly, its obviousness was a turn-off to me in earlier years; I went after the obscure books, developing a taste for mandarins like Henry James and French literature in translation. My only real encounter with Dickens was Bleak House. I loved it, and so I assumed (based on what so many people say about Dickens' tiring verbosity) that this book must have been the exception. The recent BBC adaptation of Our Mutual Friend struck me as one of the best things I've seen in a long time -- nearly compelling me to read the book, but not quite -- and I figured the screenplay must have turned Victorian dross into gold. Now, I'm reading Great Expectations and discovering what every schoolboy does: that this is sheer brilliance.

On the opening page, Pip describes the family tombstone, where his parents' names are listed but his departed brothers are represented only by engraved diamonds. This conjures in his mind a vision of these siblings born with their hands in their pockets (their bent arms forming the sides of the polygon) and never having occasion to take them out. After I read this, I had to go back and marvel at the image several times -- in fact, now, a couple of weeks later, I'm still thinking about it. And this is no isolated phenomenon. Dickens is a remarkable writer with a real gift for language that transcends time and place. He is alive on the page in 2003, just as he was a century and a half ago.