The Pickwick Papers Read-a-long: Chapters One to Eleven

THE YEAR OF THE GRASS IS UPON US.

Spoilers abound below.

Thus dubbed by this conversation and the misery that was The Tale of Two Cities.

This year, Bex is running another Dickens read-a-long,to which news we all reacted with sighs and moans of despair... and then joined in anyway. 

I have to admit, I was absolutely not looking forward to this. I really didn't get on at all with A Tale of Two Cities, and this new book is absolutely huge. I even had to get it on my Kindle (which I barely use) just so I wouldn't be constantly reminded by how much of the damn thing was left to read.

As it turns out, it's actually not so bad. 

There's no overarching plot, which is slightly odd. Instead there's four men, bumbling around the countryside in the name of the Pickwick Club. Their job is to report back on interesting happenings... and also the grass. Or at least, I think that's the idea as the chapter that explained all this is horrendous.

The first chaper is written in the form of meeting minutes and I swear I just wanted to shoot myself. I had no idea the rest of the book was going to pick up and I thought I was in for 50 million pages of secretarial babble. I mean, just look at it. 

Thankfully, that ends with Chapter Two, or I don't think I'd still be continuing with this read-a-long. After that, it's actually funny. There was a place where I literally laughed out loud, and who does that with Dickens!?

   'All right?' inquired Mr. Pickwick, with an inward presentiment that it was all wrong.
   'All right,' replied Mr. Winkle faintly.
   'Let 'em go,' cried the hostler.--'Hold him in, sir;' and away went the chaise, and the saddle-horse, with Mr. Pickwick on the box of the one, and Mr. Winkle on the back of the other, to the delight and gratification of the whole inn-yard.
   'What makes him go sideways?' said Mr. Snodgrass in the bin, to Mr. Winkle in the saddle.
   'I can't imagine,' replied Mr. Winkle. His horse was drifting up the street in the most mysterious manner--side first, with his head towards one side of the way, and his tail towards the other.

I'd forgotten how well he does satire. There's a part where a barmaid gets 'playfully' shot for refusing to serve an already drunken soldier, and how dare she complain!?

However, do you know what the most fun thing in the entire world is? Reading Charles Dickens describe the minutiae of a cricket match when you have a raging hangover. I recommend it always.

Because, after all, we are still talking about the same author. There is a lot of 'and then there was the butcher which was redbrick, which was next to the baker which was also redbrick but that house had a gate, unlike the attorney's which was next to the butcher because that had a gold door knob, just like the surgeon but without the garden...' Ad nauseum. 

Parts of this are very amusing, Mr Pickwick especially. It was touch and go whether we'd get on or not, but we do, so isn't that nice? In my head he pretty much looks like Benjamin Franklin though. 

I really liked Rachael and it really irritated me when she ran off with That Person Whose Name I Can't Remember But Talks In A Very Annoying Way. Mr Tinkle? You know who I mean. I wish he'd had more of a comeuppance but then I always do in novels. *shakes her fist at Lydia Bennett.*

So I am enjoying this... but only when I'm reading it. I'm quite happy to read this and be amused by the antics of The Pickwick Club, but it gets quite old quite quickly. The lack of overarching plot means that I struggle to pick it back up when I've put it down as I know there's not going to be any actual development or grand revelation to look forward to.

Fellow read-a-longers... how are you finding Pickwick?