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5.0 out of 5 stars
Sketches by Boz [Penguin Classics edition], Jan 14 2002
In bookstores and libraries, literary classics are a dime a dozen. There are so many different editions available of each that the problem becomes one not of finding a good read but of selecting the edition of it that's right for you. Charles Dickens is perhaps the most popular of the past masters. All his books are enormously entertaining, whether he's writing about the tragedies of this world or its travesties. His eye for the ludicrous is faultless; his representation of it in print is perfection. He never fails to paint on the canvass in our mind, with a few simple strokes, a comic character that resembles someone we've met somewhere, sometime in our lives. His characters are so real that he needs to do nothing more than describe their appearance briefly and then let them speak for themselves. They speak with all the dignity and importance we all feel in ourselves, yet they unwittingly disclose for the reader all the foibles we all possess ... and mistakenly think known only to ourselves. Likewise, when introducing tragic characters, Dickens prefers to offer brief but unerringly accurate descriptions of their build, demeanor, and dress, and then allow their own words and actions to speak for themselves. His creations elicit mirth and misery in us without fail as Dickens masterfully plucks the strings of our hearts.Unlike most writers, Dickens is equally at home in both the short story and the full-length novel format. This is because his novels were serialized in periodicals in their first publications. Only later were they edited for book form. "Sketches by Boz" is an offering of Dickens's first attempts at writing for a living. It consists of 56 passages, most of which can be read in a single sitting of less than half an hour. These are divided into four sections: "Our Parish", "Scenes", "Characters", and "Tales". Of these, only the last contains fiction. The 44 nonfiction accounts are just as entertaining as their made-up brothers. In fact, I found them even more fun to read at times. Dickens only thinly disguised the identities of his victims while lampooning them, and as editor Dennis Walder so rightly points out, many of these descriptions would surely result in lawsuits for libel if they were published about public figures today. This was my first experience reading a Penguin Classics edition of Dickens, and I was extremely pleased with it. The editor introduced "Sketches" with a few notes of academic and historical interest, a particular one of which I found to be of great interest as it finally answered a question I'd had for half my life: namely, where Dickens had acquired his nickname of Boz. But more important for today's reader of Dickens is the "Notes" section at the back of the book in which Mr. Walder defines Dickensian slang and explains the author's references to people, events, and places of early nineteenth century London. Much of Dickens's wit is lost on today's reader without such disclosures. One of my favorite ways of reading a classic author is to collect all of his or her works and then read through them at a leisurely pace in the order they were written. I did this with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the intention of noting how his style developed over the years. I was surprised to find an unexpected benefit of that project: I was transported to those times and felt as I imagine one of Doyle's contemporary fans must have felt as he read each new Sherlock Holmes story. After finishing Doyle, I immediately began collecting Dickens for a similar project. "Sketches by Boz", being a collection of Dickens's first literary efforts, was of course the first in this series. The second Dickens book is "The Pickwick Papers", of which I have the Library of the Future edition. But after reading the Penguin Classics "Sketches", I'm determined to first replace "Pickwick" with the Penguin edition. The Penguin books are reasonably priced and well worth every penny.
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