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Ok, so let me get this out right from the start: I love good writing, vintage OR emergent! In every era there are or have been good writers and bad. Masterpieces have been written from the advent of the written word, as well as out-and-out stinkers. I have a tendency to love the Victorian authors, but as you can see by my "Recent Reads" and the "Books at my Bedside" I also love contemporary literature. What it really comes down to is simply a matter of taste; one man's Trollope is another's Miller is another's Brown... Buuuuut -
The other day I saw this conversation on Yahoo:
Recently I decided to take up reading "the classics" that I've always wanted to read. I read "The Invisible Man" by H.G. Wells last month, and I just finished "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." I had planned on reading "A Tale of Two Cities" next, but reading these books has become too frustrating.
I have to sit with a dictionary while I'm reading, and I spend more time highlighting obscure words and phrases and looking up their meaning than reading. This breaks up the momentum and kills any enthusiasm I have for the story. Something I never have to go through with contemporary fiction. The flowery language seems pretentious to me. Does anyone else find Victorian literature ridiculously hard to read? I would really like to continue, but is it even worth the effort?
My tendency is to get all indignant, superior and insulting and tell this person to stop being so lazy and maybe they'd learn something... but in my dotage I am (finally) beginning to learn to temper my judgmental nature and look to see what is going on here.
What is happening here? Honestly, this isn't the first time I've come across this very complaint. There is something different about the Victorians and contemporary authors, their writing styles, vocabulary and even viewpoints that can make the Victorians seem daunting. I have been a fan of Dickens since my childhood so, for me, reading the Victorians is just kinda second nature. However, I can see how some may find the old styles a bit more difficult. So: 1- what's the difference, and 2- what's to be done about it?
So as not to get all academic about this topic, I will say that perhaps the biggest reason for the seemingly slower, drawn out form of writing noted in Victorian era writing is that many stories were written as installments for newspapers or magazines such as Bentley's Miscellany and All the Year Round. So instead of going to the Book Store or clicking onto Amazon, each week, or month (depending on the journal's frequency of publication), you would read the next part of the story. Talk about patience and anticipation! Can you imagine having to wait a month at a clip to read each chapter of The Da Vinci Code? Today's books, for the most part are page-turners designed to grab your attention and keep it 'til the end. The Victorians could afford to spend much ink on the development of characters, plot, even scenery; besides, as-often-as-not many authors (Dickens for example) was paid by the word!
But I'm not. So, this post will be continued within the next few days (got ya sitting on the edge of your seat?)!
