Dear Serial Readers,
First, if you click on the part-issue cover of Martin C to your right of this page, you'll find all the installments of the novel in pdf forms you can download, plus many illustrations (2 per installment). You'll also see the brief headnote that this novel was not popular among initial readers and that Dickens added the traveling to America portion later to boost sales.
Since all I know about this novel is that the title character does travel to the US, I did notice the attention to travel in this second installment--lovely Tom Pinch's jaunt up to Salisbury to collect Pecksniff's new architecture student (none other than the eponymous MC) *and* the allusions to reading as transportative! Tom Pinch's delight in both kinds of travel were also a pleasure to read, perhaps because of the relief we readers (like Tom) get after the stifling and miserable atmosphere of the vulgar vultures after the aged Martin C's money in chapter 4. How nice to escape to the road, and to traveling via books!
[ASIDE: I should add that while I think "Pecksniff" is a perfect caractonym, I'm less persuaded by "Pinch"--who may be pinched as Pecksniffian assistant), but has some fine qualities not conveyed through this tag.]
The descriptions of the two bookshops in Salisbury have my vote as best passages--how the smell of pages and leather binding transport Tom back to his boyhood grammar, and how the illustrations from Robinson Crusoe and the Persian Tales prompt his travels to other places and times "before the Pecksniff era" of his life. Reading here is much more than a mental activity--it involves sensations of smell, sight, touch, sounds of language. I do love the Dickensian word playing, and there are terrific flourishes in this segment too!
Next time, chapters 6-8. I'm still debating picking up our traveling pace through this serial.
Serially in Salisbury,
Susan
2 comments:
I absolutely agree about the pairing of these two chapters: who could resist the appeal of Tom Pinch's physical, mental, and gustatory travels after the oppressive (but amusing) "family council" of chapter 4! Pinch strikes me here as a flaneur in training, a naive and charming precursor to Dickens's later "Uncommercial Traveller".
Since I have never read Chuzzlewit before, I also wonder what the closing transitional gesture towards dreams may betoken. Pinch is relatively transparent to us, we're promised more about young Martin, and Pecksniff (sitting by the fire--typical Dickensian fancy spot!) remains pointedly obscure...
Serially backtracking for a second, somehow I lopped off part of the first line of my previous post. It was supposed to read: “Time travel, rather than worldly travel, seems to make the beginning of this Dickens novel, with the references to William the Conqueror and Adam and his descendants…”
I too enjoyed the trip to Salisbury, the chance to linger with two characters—engaging ones, at that—after earlier meeting so many others, from old Chuzzelwit and his grand nephew, to a deaf female cousin, to Anthony and son James, to George and the Spottletoes, and Slyme and Chivy and Tigg, to name a few. Oh, and someone’s “disagreeable” spinster daughters. What’s to become of everyone? I’m also interested in “how a good man may deal with failure and disappointment.”
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