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I like the section where Bloom is transformed into a woman by the brothel mistress and bullied by her, shamed by various phantoms for being a pervert etc and then (thanks to the magical button burst) rounds on them all with a sort of heroic, pragmatic wit and finally relents and returns to us as...

And yes Circe is interminable. Full of brilliance but goes on and on and on. Luckily, the final three episodes are great, even the cabman's shelter which I'd dreaded reading, under the impersonation it was written entirely in cliches, a sort of parody of dud journalism. Which it somewhat is...

Oh yeah I remember thinking of Burroughs when I read that. Don't they discuss the erection when hung thing in the Cyclops episode? Or it appears in the parodies or something. Circe is among other things a big recapitulation of everything that led up to it. I think one book I read about it saw...

From Angus Calder's introduction to Great Expectations (my tattered, scribbled on, old copy that I inherited/nicked from my mum)

Yeah, I find that fascinating cos a modern 'serious' writer of novels wouldn't even consider writing for such a huge and varied audience. I'm not at all plugged into the modern world of literature but the authors I am aware of as being mega sellers tend to be working in genres like fantasy...

It's interesting reading about Dickens as a popular phenomenon, how different that role was from that of authors in our time. He apparently would write novels and release them in chapters and change them as he went along, partly in response to the public reaction. Playing that role probably...

The bolded below is an acute observation and I assume at least subconsciously the inspiration for Orwell's "A Hanging". Stuff like this shows that Dickens had as penetrating an understanding of psychology as the more respected realists, it's just he is more interested in creating caricatures...

Problem is you see I'm a (minor league) addict. If I buy weed to 'only' smoke on saturday (let's say), I'll with 100% certainty be smoking it every single night and day I'm not working.

Don't really smoke weed anymore 😓

Finished "A Tale" last night. Ignore how flagrantly improbable it all is and it has a great ending. He actually "got" me, too, with the whole guillotine scene. I was genuinely moved, where previously I'd been rolling my eyes and snorting at his attempts at jerking tears from my cynical...

Read two excellent essays on Dickens by V.S. Pritchett last night, here's one of them

I really want speakers that are so good my friends visit me and feel jealous. They almost cry in fact. That's all it is really.

Cheers! Guess I'll download the complete works of De Quincey... For £1.99.

Terrible gut today, lots of mildly traumatic visits to the loo

What speakers do you use?

Fucking fantastic, thanks! I've found reading him a mixed bag as I keep saying but there's a strong element of "I need to read more of him" always there. I read "Great Expectations" probably over a decade ago and like everything else I've ever read it's sunk into oblivion for the most part.

I need to start writing luka's jewels down on post it notes

@jenks I know this is a vulgar thing to request but could you rank your top 10/5 dickens novels? You seem to have read them all and know them well. When I read Dickens, as a prose stylist, I feel that not only can I not write but that most people can't write at all. He drops all these...

I swear sometimes mvuent is the cleverest bastard of all time (n/B apart from all the other clever bastards on here ;)

Hints of 'Prufrock' in the peculiar simile in the first paragraph here. "The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the...