Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Bleak House, by Charles Dickens is 990 pages long so you can imagine it isn’t easy to summarize. And I won’t.

The best part about it is the people. Angelic and evil ones. Smart and dumb. Straightforward soldiers and preachers who can’t say anything without giving a trance-inducing sermon. Pathetic shopkeepers and noble retirees. Lawyers, judges, soldiers, shopkeepers, boys who sweep the streets, doctors, preachers, iron mongers, farmers, inn keepers, brick makers, sailors, children of all ages and social standing. All of these populate the novel. You put the book down just happy for all of the people you got to know. There are names like Guppy, Smallweed, Flite, Nemo, Tulkinghorn, Badger, and Skimpole.

There is the woman who waits for her law case to be resolved. She goes to the court everyday and is certain the chief judge would miss her if she did not come. She keeps many birds in her apartment. Their names are Hope, Youth, Health, Sanity, Comfort, Beauty, etc. When she loses the case, she releases the birds, saying goodbye to each by name. “Goodbye Hope. Goodbye Sanity….”

There is the family of a former soldier which refers to its children by the places where they were born: Quebec, Malta, etc. The father of this family instructs his wife to respond when anyone asks for his opinion on an issue. “Tell him wife what my opinion is on that.” And then she will answer for him.

One woman ignores her children and family because she is too busy sending Londoners to some place in Africa to grow coffee beans. The food in her house is half cooked, the kids half dressed, and the house a mess.  It turns out the king in those African regions tries to sell the transplants as slaves.

Another woman who has four boys is trying to reform the poor. She invades their houses and gives them inspiring tracts. In one house she enters without knocking, the father is lying on the floor and begs her to leave. “Oh, please go somewhere else and reform another poor soul. You are bothering us. We are happy the way we are,” he says. “I have been drunk for the last three days and would be for four if I had the money. And don’t bother leaving those little booklets because we can’t read.” All four boys resent that they have to give up their allowances to help the poor.

A poor boy sweeps a street crossing for people hoping for a tip. He knows nothing about his parents, background, or how old he is. The world of well to do people is a mystery to him. If someone asks him a question that he is afraid to answer, he replies: “I don’t know nothink.”

One young fellow is pinning all of his hopes on an inheritance case that will set him up for life—he thinks. So, in the meantime, he dabbles in medicine, law and the military, hoping and hoping that the case will be decided and his ship will come in. In all of these career moves, he fails miserably. He starts getting paranoid, interpreting kind hearted offerings of help as somehow designed to hurt him in the inheritance. He ends up sitting in the Chancery court every day.

All of the lawyers in the novel are either evil, self serving, long-winded, ineffectual or useless.

You should read the book. It is teeming with humanity.

I have recently been on a tear to soak up information, fiction, and all sorts of unrelated knowledge in all kinds of media. In the past month, for example, I finished reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens, a 990 page delight; I listened to the book, Guns Germs and Steel, a real eye opener that everyone should read; I also listened to the cassette Dale Carnegie Leadership Mastery, which provides some good tips; and am right now beginning to listen to His Excellency, George Washington, a best seller.

All of this came from my wandering through the stacks at the Greenwich Connecticut Library and picking up anything that suited my fancy. The tapes and CD’s each take from 6 to 14 hours to listen to and that sounds like a lot of time. But it really isn’t when you think about it. How much time do we spend in the car driving to work, walking the dog, just walking, or doing mindless work around the house? When I am doing all of that I try to put my headphones on and listen to Oliver Twist or The Odyssey (both of which are the full texts read by great narrators.)

So for the next several entries of this blog, I am going to discuss each of these works: Bleak House, Guns Germs and Steel, Dale Carnegie and His Excellency. None of them are connected as far as I can tell other than the fact that I picked them up at the Library and that they piqued my interest.

How far have I come? Have we all come? My own little corner of cyberspace to write whatever I wish. This is my inaugural blog!

Just think of it! Someone in Outer Slobovia can read my thoughts. Even a person in Central Slobovia, where I would assume there is much more connectivity,can be in touch with my inner self, my core, my stream of consciousness central person. Oh, we may not speak the same language, share the same customs, see the sun come up at the same time. But these are minor differences. What is important is that I am one in a manner of speaking with that on line Slobovian farmer, pharmacist, alchemist, interfenestration specialist, or deepsea fish farmer. It is one soul in unison with another soul. The innermost innermost of the most innermost. Man that is deep I am trying to tell you.

But wait. So many other people are writing or at least thinking the same thing. Millions, maybe ultimately billions would like to believe that they are communing with people around the world. And then what am I? Little me? A grain of sand in a vast beach of other grains trying valiantly but futilely to distinguish myself from all the other slivers of silicone. A nascent part of an Intel Chip. One small cog in a giant worldwide invisible wheel turning, turning but coming back to where it started and going nowhere.

I will not dispair, though. Not me. What if all my fellow bloggers felt that way? Eh? What would happen then? Eh? I am not a quitter! I will persistently blog on, confident that I can make a difference in this vast incorporeal space I am now entering. If I can touch a heart, tickle a funny bone, change a mind, catch someone's eye, get under your skin, make you pull your hair out, give you the willies, or get you to lend me your ears, then the world will be better for it. And though I am but small and insignificant, I am certain that together with my fellow bloggers I will prevail.

All power to blogging!!! Right on!