For the heck of it, I read through the Cliff's Notes on David Copperfield and Bleak House. I never read those things in school, and now I'm awfully glad of it.

The Copperfield one says that it tends to ramble and meander because Dickens got paid by the word and wanted to cram in as many as possible. That is simply untrue - it's a common myth, but Cliff isn't taking very good notes. The way serials were published made it necessary for each issue to be X number of words - but no more and no less. The exact length of the book was decided on in the contract before it was ever begun - they were long, but that was because Victorians expected a big chunk of book for their money. Dickens couldn't just ramble on for more cash. What's the point of telling kids that he did? To give them a reason to complain about the length of the book?

Bleak House states that Esther, one of the narrators, is not a good character because she has no flaws. This is a common enough complaint, but it's made by people who don't realize that Esther isn't the most reliable narrator in the world. If you believe her, she is a paragon of self denial and virture, as are Ada and Mr. Jarndyce, but a careful reader will also see that she covers things up, leaves details out, and probably just plain makes things up now and then. She's a fascinating character - she lies, she's not half as modest as she claims to be, she's quite possibly a lesbian, she secretly exacts a sort of crypto-revenge on the girl she loves...I could go on. It's a similar complaint to those who don't like Agnes in David Copperfield - she comes off as sort of flawless, but that's because we only see her through David's eyes.

Is the point of Cliff's Notes to make you NOT read the book on the grounds that you aren't missing much?

Last night, I finished reading Little Dorrit. When I read one of the bigger Dickens books, I like to spend about six weeks on it - there's too much going on in them to try to digest it all in a few long sittings. The original readers, of course, had to spend about a year and a half waiting for all of the parts to come out.

Anyway, when one finishes a six week reading effort, one does the Happy Dickens Dance. No, you cannot see me doing this, but it's very similar to Carol's Happy Archives Dance.


Also, in the general spirit of things, I watched "Mickey's Christmas Carol" last night - I remember my dad taking me to see it on a double bill with The Rescuers when I was a kid. One thing I certainly didn't notice then that one of the tombstones in teh graveyard reads "Gladys Knight." Neither did anyone else, though - I can't find any mention of this on the internet. Finding a previously unknown Disney in-joke is probably grounds for a whole new kind of happy dance!

Last night I looked on bn.com and found that they had the Nonesuch Dickens reissues at 65% off.

Now, the Nonesuch Dickens was a limited edition complete works set that came out in in 1937. Limited to 877 sets, since each set came with an original woodcut of one of the illustrations (of which there were 877 spread across the complete works). The books were elegant, but not garish, printed in VERY high quality. The full set sold for 56 guineas (about 4500 bucks in today's money) and complete sets in mint condition today can go for thirty grand. They're that nice.

Whatever company now owns the plates started issueing facsimiles last year - their plan is to do six books at a time til they're done, and the first set included Bleak House, David Copperfield and the Christmas books, the three that I think are absolutely essential (though nobody reads 4 out of the 5 Christmas books anymore, and nobody honestly needs to). Also included is Great Expectations (one of the few books that I wish was a lot longer), Hard Times (the gloomiest book ever to be hilarious), and Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. Like most early Dickens books, those two ramble and never seem to be going anywhere, but they certainly have their moments.

They're bound just as nicely as the originals - one will never need another copy. Even the facsimiles are tough to find - bookfinder doesn't list a copy of Bleak House for less than about 40-50, plus shipping. So I had refrained from buying any of them.

But according to bn.com, barnes and noble was selling three of them for $13 a volume. And the other three were $7 each. This is bargain shopping at its absolute finest.

It was about half an hour til the nearest barnes and noble closed. And the sleet was falling hard. But taxis were plentiful. So now I have them all, and I plan to go in and transfer the portions I underlined in my old paperback copies into these. And maybe insert some xeroxed endnotes into the back.

I am such a dork.

After a great couple of days in New York, I took a twelve buck bus ride to Philadelphia, where I met up with Ronni and my friend Peter Stone Brown. We then met up with some more of the Dylan faithfl, had a pizza, headed for the Spectrum for another Dylan concert.

Ronni and I didn't have tickets, but managed to score a free pair in the parking lot from some remarkably nice people. I've never not been able to get intoa show, and never resorted to actual begging. Bob sees all and knows all and looks out for us, man.

The show itself..the show two nights before was great, but the Philadeplphia shows was one of THOSE shows. The kind Dylan fans go to show after show hoping to see. Left me breathless and exhausted. My full review is here. From start to finish, not a verse was phoned in. Evn a couple of songs that tend to fall flat were fantastic. Every now and then something just gets hold of Bob - it usually gets him for at least a song or two per night (sometimes just a line or two). Now and then it grips him at the beginning and never lets go, and when that happens, there's no place in the world I'd rather be.

The next day, Peter took us on a whirlwind tour of Philadelphia. Dickens is a favorite of his, too, so he took me to see a statue of Dickens with Little Nell that's situated in what may be the finest neighborhood of Queen Anne-style Victorian houses I've ever seen in my life.

Ronni took this shot of me with the statue:



Given what happens in the end of the book she's, I can only imagine that the conversation between Dickens and Little Nell must be SERIOUSLY awkward. Why she's gazing adoringly at him is a bit of a mystery to me, but those Victorians were a weird bunch.

Every year I pick at least one big Dickens book to attack - this year, I'm reading "Little Dorrit," the last of the "late" novels that I haven't read yet. Enjoying it tremendously, though it's not as good as "Bleak House," "David Copperfield," or "A Christmas Carol."

Just to amuse myself, I've spent some time browsing through rare book dealers' web pages looking at signed Dickens items - checks, envelopes, letters, etc. Too expensive to REALLY tempt me, but I always was a collector at heart. I've scaled down my collecting bug in recent years (due to things like finances, storage space, etc).

When I was in grade school, I collected baseball cards. I had them crammed into every nook and cranny of my bedroom and closet. I still have a handful, though I haven't bought any new ones in years and years.

In middle school, I got into Star Wars collecting. This was during the long lull between movies, so a lot of original stuff could still be had at garage sales and flea markets. I scoured every garage sale I could get to on my bike every weekend for a very long time. At one point, I actually had a complete set of the original action figures, but I sold a couple of them after college when money was tight. At one point, my entire closet (and I had a really huge closet when I was a kid) was like a museum of Star Wars stuff. At the same time, I was collecting action figures (of all types), hot wheels cars (old and rare) and comic books (with an emphasis on Spider-Man).

My last major collection was of Atari games - the high school I attended my senior year was right near a handful of thrift stores. By this time, the days of finding Star Wars stuff at garage sales were long gone. At the same time, I got into bootleg albums - though mainly in the form of cassette tapes, which were fun to collect, since there was no real resale value on them. They were collected strictly for fun. I still get plenty of them, though they're incredibly easy to get now, which takes some of the fun out of it.

So, these days, there's not much that I specifically collect, though I am a sucker for getting autographs now and then. Living near a couple of enormous Borders stores gives me a good opportunity to get signed books regularly, and I'm friendly with a couple of serious autograph hounds who can generally tell me where to go to try to get the autograph of any given rock star who comes to town, though I don't do much stalking these days. In general, I'm more interested in getting the autograph myself than in buying something on ebay (since I'd never know that it was genuine, and would always assume it probably wasn't), though in the case of Dickens (and other dead folks) there's not much you can do about that. I suppose that I COULD go to Westminster Abbey with a pickaxe and shovel and a sharpie, but it's just not the same if you have to guide the corpse's hand yourself.

Tours are slowing down a bit - I only have six or seven scheduled for this week. But, in the middle of all that, I also have jury duty, and I start my yearly gig doing merchandising for Mattel.

The Mattel gig isn't bad - I ride around with my boss to retailers around the city to set up displays. I end up eating lunch in all sorts of bizarre places (finding edible food on the south side is always an adventure), and I get to see strange things (the back room at K-Mart), scary things (the back room at Wal-Mart), and, now and then, I get to play with some cool toys.

That said, as busy as I am with other things, I wish I hadn't signed on for another hitch this year. I'm going to end up behind schedule on getting started on my next book (which I aimed to start last week, but haven't moved past the "notes" phase). Over the next eleven months, I have to write two books (including editing, which I don't like to start until a month or so after the draft is finished, in order to let it settle), and do the final revisions on two more. I expect to get the revision notes from my editor for Pirates of the Retail Wasteland soon, but there's no telling when these things will actually arrive. I took October off from writing because the tour schedule was so hectic, and it's always hard to get back into the swing of things after a break.

On the plus side, I have two vacations coming up - New York and Philadelphia weekend after next, and Atlanta for Thanksgiving. Then, in December, I'll be in L.A. to visit my brother.

RECENT READING LIST:

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson - a memoir of growing up in Des Moines in the 50's. Des Moines had changed a lot by the time I entered into the task of growing up there myself, but a lot of the places written about were still there. I'll read anything Bryson writes, any time. His view of the 50's is pretty clearly rose-colored (and he clearly knows it), but it's delightful to read the account of someone who feels so fortunate to have been around in the last days before they started to turn the country into one big mall.

The End by Lemony Snicket - I'd lost track of what was happening in the overall plot long ago, and this didn't answer all of the questions that had been raised before. It was still a pretty satisfying finish, though.

Little Dorritt by Charles Dickens - I embark on a large Dickens novel (sometimes two) every year when it starts to get cold (I already read Tale of Two Cities earlier this year, but it's one of the short ones). This year's offering is one of his least popular, but it's the last of the "late" books that I haven't read. The late books are generally a lot more readable than the early ones, which usually stop having a coherent plot about midway through. The early ones are, however, quite a bit funnier than the late ones (which are still occasionally hysterical). Dorritt, in particular, is pretty grim stuff. I'll probably read "The Old Curiosity Shop" next, or maybe take another crack at "Martin Chuzzlewit."

I sort of felt silly when I bought a laptop last month. I mean, I don't travel much, and I already have a computer. The absolute only function a laptop would serve is that I could work on my books at the coffeeshop or on the occasional plane trip. But it turns out to have been the best couple hundred bucks I could have spent.

For one thing, I get WAY more done. Normally, the "writing process" involves getting online, checking the setlists of every band that played anywhere the night before, checking all my usual news sites, blogs, and comic strips, reading a few articles, getting distracted, and maybe, just maybe, opening the word processor in the first place.

Now, I get up early in the morning, as always, quickly check my e-mail, and then take the laptop to the coffee shop. It doesn't go online, so all I can do there is sip coffee and work.

As burned out as I felt last night, I sort of planned to skip work on either book today, but I woke up even earlier than normal (my phone rang early on with someone wanting to check the balance of their credit card - apparently, my number used to be a bank or something) and found there were flurries in the air, and they were expected to continue for an hour or two, and scrapped all plans to rest - instead, I'd go work on the book at the cafe while it was snowing. I got close to 3000 words in a couple of hours (at a rate like that, you can have a full-length YA draft in about two weeks)

One thing I've found is that sitting in a cafe, working on a book and sipping coffee while looking up at the window to watch the snow falling on the city, is about as sublime a pleasure as there is.

It's up there with reading Dickens on a brown line el train on a cold wintery day, which I enjoy so much that I nearly called my new album "Dickens on the Brown Line," though I scrapped that on account of it sounding WAY too much like a punchline to a dirty joke.


Tomorrow: free performance of "Love's Labour Lost" at the Newberry Library, across the street from my favorite park. I love this city.