Uncle Scrooge's rough night

One flaw in my plan is that we're already halfway through the book even though we're only at the first of three response points. But oh well.

Now as we begin "A Christmas Carol" we go from a book that neither of us had read or heard much about, to a book whose story is ubiquitous. My reading experience, at least, was illustrated in my mind with scenes from a movie version I must have seen years ago. In particular Scrooge's office appears in my mind as it did in the movie.

Also, I'd say the story line, even some of the lines of dialogue, seems to follow closely my expectations. I don't think I've really come across a moment yet where I've felt like the book is substantially different than the movie(s) and/or the narrative I have in my head.

That said, it was funny to read "Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!" It struck me as funny because the two exclamations are inextricably fused in my mind. It's a phrase "Bah humbug!" Seeing it broken up as two words, with dialogue attribution in the middle was funny and also gave me a better understanding of what he's saying and how he's saying it. (Although I still haven't been able to fully grasp what the word "Humbug" means.

This one's pretty funny, too. Such as when Scrooge opines that "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his hears. He should!"

Or when the clerk accidentally applauds the nephew's defense of Christmas: "The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever."

Another bit that stuck out has to do with the class/charity themes in the book. Such as when the charity solicitor comes by in hopes of using the warm feelings of Christmas to raise money to feed the homeless. To which Scrooge responds, "Are there no prisons?"

Question for you, Mr. Symbolism: What does the fog represent? Is it just a means of creating a setting in which a ghost might appear out of nowhere? Or does it have a deeper meaning. I'm not quite sure yet, myself.

Another first impression is that I like Dickens' writing style. I started the book a bit leery, because in my mind I think of Dickens as a lyrical writer, in the sense that his writing is playful, which sometimes I don't like. Or more precisely, I don't like it if it's done in a heavy handed way.

But I just finished Stephen King's book, "On Writing," which I highly recommend. And he lists Dickens as a great, natural writer, and after reading the first half of this book I can see why. Reading the King book has me thinking about mechanics and language. I'm also reading at the moment a book by an ex cult member about his departure from the cult. It's rather clunkily written, which is to say, it is written rather well, except that the adjectives, verbs and metaphors he uses stick out like a sore thumb. Which is to say, it would be better if the writer stuck to cliches rather than the bizarre metaphors he comes up with as a result of apparently trying to avoid cliches. 

Dickens, on the other hand, seems to be able to lob adjective after adjective in his playful writing, but he picks the right words, and so it works rather well. He's gifted.

What say you?