Why Dickens Should Only Be Read Through Audiobooks
Leave those massive books on the shelf
A few years ago I mentioned to a friend that I had just finished the audiobook of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.
‘An audiobook?’ she asked, looking mildly scandalised, ‘So… you cheated?’
Cheated? That implies that reading is some sort of challenge to be won, rather than just a pleasure to be enjoyed. And it assumes that an audiobook is an inferior medium — some sort of dodgy shortcut for those who can’t handle the actual experience of reading words off a page.
It is true that some authors don’t work as well when read out loud — DH Lawrence and Virginia Woolf wrote paragraphs that deserve to be carefully chewed over — but on the whole audiobooks are a terrific means of experiencing literature. And in the particular case of Charles Dickens, audiobooks offer the best possible means of experiencing his genius.
So, if you were thinking of taking a Dickensian turn at some point soon, I’d encourage you to leave the book on the shelf and reach for your headphones instead. Dickens belongs in your ears.
Here’s why–
- Dickens wrote explicitly for performance
Dickens’ legacy is so vast that his literary career looks like an inevitability, but he very almost committed himself to an entirely different artistic calling — acting. Innately theatrical, he spent much of his childhood directing and acting in plays, and when he was twenty-one he applied for an audition at a major theatre. The appearance of a nasty head cold meant the audition had to be rescheduled, but he soon found himself on the road to literary acclaim and the ambition of becoming a full-time thespian was abandoned.
And yet, his love of performance didn’t go anywhere — his writing was suffused with the theatre. I have no evidence for this, but I’m convinced that Dickens performed his characters to himself in his study as he wrote. How else could he create such vivid and diverse characterisations? His characters fizz with life because Dickens always kept one foot on the stage, invoking the world of comic theatre in his stories.
In later life he took to delivering intensely popular public performances of his work, where he threw himself into bringing the characters to life, leading his audiences into mournful weeping and comedic hysterics both. One contemporary observer commented that he read ‘as though he was presenting it in costume on the stage.’
With this in mind, isn’t it a tragedy to consign his characters to dry text when an actual actor could be giving them the performance for which they were written?
2. The performances are magnificent in their own right
What would you say offers the greatest challenge for an actor? Playing a major role in a Shakespeare play? Taking on a character with a different accent from your own? Trying not to be rubbish in the Star Wars prequels?
These are all great feats for sure, but none are as challenging as performing a Dickens novel. In addition to the usual challenge of reading well, actors have to wrap their voices around many dozens of characters, weaving between an endlessly diverse offering of dialects and vocal mannerisms.
It takes a special actor to pull this off, and the opportunity to experience their accomplishment is a great pleasure in itself. It’s been years since I listened to Martin Jarvis (an audiobook grandee) performing David Copperfield, but I can still clearly hear his gravely, earnest Mr Peggety, his voluminously pompous Mr Micawber and the clipped insistence of his Betsey Trotwood.
The same is true for each of the (seven) Dickens novels I’ve enjoyed as an audiobook, whereas my memory of the one Dickens book I’ve read as a physical book, Hard Times, is most definitely the foggiest — without the elevation of a masterly performance it was a half-experience.
3. The books become accessible
Language changes, and when you’re reading old fiction you find yourself having to wrangle with a host of unfamiliarities. One of the more frustrating is the Victorian propensity to write with absurdly long, straggly, sentences, which almost feel like the author is juggling and saying ‘look how long I can keep this going for!’ Dickens certainly didn’t hold back on this front — the opening sentence of Oliver Twist is 98 words long.
This can be difficult to adjust to, given that the internet has trained us to expect short, orderly sentences that can be easily scanned. I’m not surprised many readers find the experience of reading Dickens off-puttingly exhausting.
Yet when an actor takes on these sentences they’re transformed. Rather than grating your patience, the words waft along pleasingly, which was presumably part of the effect Dickens and his contemporaries were after when they decided to use as few full stops as possible.
In addition to monster sentences, Dickens also tries to convey his characters’ various dialects using an avalanche of apostrophes, which poses something of a challenge. Sam Weller is one of the highlights of The Pickwick Papers, but his dialogue can be rather difficult to follow. Take, for example, the following exclamation:
‘No man never see a dead donkey ‘cept the gen’l’m’n in the black silk smalls as know’d the young ‘ooman as kep’ a goat; and that wos a French donkey, so wery likely he warn’t wun o’ the reg’lar breed.’
You can work your way into Sam’s dialect with some work, but who picks up a book with the intention of working? Sam Weller’s cockney pitter-patter is best enjoyed as a flow, and it’s far more preferable to let an actor do the hard work for you.
Given the host of obstacles between readers and a pleasurable Dickens experience (ahem), it’s not surprising that his place in modern culture is normally assured through movies and BBC costume dramas. They can be terrific, but as is usually the case, are never quite as good as the source material.
So, with that in mind — leave the TV switched off and the books gathering dust, and submerge yourself into an audiobook instead. It’s an experience you won’t forget.
