I checked out the famous tome (Everyman's Library edition) from the Rose Garden
library on Monday Jan 8, 2024. Falling in love immediately with the narrative, I
didn't rush but planned to enjoy one or two chapters a day. At that pace, I
would finish around the end of Feburary, I thought.
Yet the story proceeded at a good clip and by and by grew on me. I laughed and
cried, just as the author intended about 200 years ago, at the scenes sketched by
his poetic pen. Soon I found I was consuming anywhere from 50 to 100+ pages a
day (in the afternoons), and reached the end on page 877 on Monday Jan 28.
The most memorable part for me was when David, a 10-year-old orphan, fleeing a
sweatshop, penniless, robbed, and abused, plodded over a week from London to
Dover to seek his great aunt and last hope. I cried.
Another fan, Tolstoy, was quoted in the introduction:
If you sift the world's prose literature, Dickens will remain; sift Dickens,
David Copperfield will remain; sift David Copperfield, the description of
the storm at sea will remain.
I think this is what Mr. T had in mind:
The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it,
in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the
awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and,
at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would
engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it
seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to
undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed
themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the
late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be
gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were
changed into valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary stormbird
sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water
shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously
rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another
shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and
buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a
rending and upheaving of all nature.
