The Penguin Blog

Doing Dickens - Part 7

We’re nearly halfway through our Dickens readathon with Barnaby Rudge, a story of family secrets set amid the riots that nearly destroyed 18^th-century London.

I don’t know if it’s because it’s January, or because Claire Tomalin’s biography says it is ‘the least popular of his books at the time, and has remained so’, or just because of its drudgy name, but I have to confess I was slightly dreading Barnaby Rudge. In fact, I was very pleasantly surprised. (I think).

The plus points are easy. The most thrilling, bloodthirsty descriptions of mob violence I’ve ever read, as mad raging crowds in the Gordon riots set fire to churches, storm Newgate prison and lie in depraved heaps drinking flaming liquor. The plausibility of weak men with grudges forming themselves into groups called things like ‘United Bulldogs’ and acting all macho as they smash things up. The baddies, of course: smooth-talking Sir John Chester, and animalistic Hugh, who is transformed by alcohol from a rugged beefcake (at which point Becky pointed out it was slightly wrong of me to be attracted to a 19^th-century illustration) into a devilish beast. The last few chapters are a thrillride of shocking revelations, burnings, kidnappings, heaving bosoms, sizzling gypsies and sword fights.

But – the bad news it takes about 400 pages to get here. Not that much seems to happen before that. It’s a novel without a hero, not necessarily a problem, but I found the holy fool Barnaby Rudge too much of a cutout. And, we all agreed the depiction of young women was decidedly icky. Now on to my fellow Dickens fans’ views:

‘I don't understand why Barnaby Rudge is so unpopular; it's great! It starts slowly, I'll admit, but I really enjoyed Dickens's London of the 1780s, which is all lawlessness, muddy streets, villains crouching on corners and wigs being blown off. I think the best, most interesting character in this novel is THE MOB itself, with its complex motivations, and its unstoppable, destructive will. I love the build up of tension as the London riots gather momentum, and the climax is compelling. One thing really bugs me, though: even allowing for the fact he's a Victorian, the author's attitude towards young women is sometimes deeply unnerving. There is one uncomfortable chapter, in which our heroines are at the mercy of some potential rapists, where Dickens seems to be enjoying himself -ahem- a bit too much. It says a lot for the brilliance, humour and insightfulness of the rest of his story telling that I still love the book.’  Becky Stocks

‘Although this didn't have the immediate pace of the other Dickenses I've read, Barnaby Rudge is still full of such amazing characters. The consensus seemed to be in our group that even a weaker Dickens knocks the spots off particularly modern fiction, and with figures like wicked-but-possibly-handsome Hugh (have you ever seen someone swoon over a nineteenth-century line-drawing? I have, now), lovely Gabriel Varden (apparently the original main character in Dickens's early thoughts), dreadful small-man Simon Tappertit and the best villain I think I've ever read, Mr Chester. Father of Edward, our male love-interest, Mr Chester is utterly evil in the most friendly, smiling manner: a perfect sociopath, delighted to be fooling people with his welcoming face. His dialogue throughout is some of the best, most modern I've read in any fiction, and I urge you to read this book to acquaint yourself with him alone, even if it didn't (four hundred pages in) also contain wild rioting, burning lakes of alcohol and terrible bloodshed. Overall score: a surprising 6.2.’  Sam Binnie

Next time – Martin Chuzzlewit, where we look forward to discovering the drunkard Mrs Gamp.

Doing Dickens, Part 6 – Christmas Special

 ‘Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?’

Ah, Dickens and Christmas, two things that go together just like chestnuts roasting and open fires, or... I don’t know... raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens (I may be mixing up my seasonal references). The above remark from a little London barrow-girl, apparently overheard in 1870, pretty much sums up how inseparable Dickens and Christmas are in most people’s minds. And as the festive season gets into full swing, the Dickens reading group have worked ourselves into a fever pitch of yuletide excitement, with a whole host of Dickens-related events to fuel our obsession.

The first of these: a special Christmas Carol book club, which met in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street (a pub Dickens used to frequent), to drink wine, eat mince pies and talk about the book. Nearly half of our group of 12 or so were reduced to tears by it, with some of us sobbing pretty much throughout, even at Tiny Tim. One reader described it as “worse than the John Lewis adverts”. We all remarked on how strange it was to actually read something we already knew so well from film and TV adaptations, and loved that so much of the dialogue was the same – proof, if any more were needed, of how minty fresh and perfect Dickens’s writing is. We were still moved by the book’s humanist message of opening up your heart at Christmas (a time “to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures”), and its anger at complacency and ignorance (“are there no workhouses?”). We also loved how Scrooge suddenly becomes so silly and hysterical after his transformation, and how the book has such an exuberant, comic, holiday feel. But mainly, we were just so impressed that Dickens managed to conjure up this timeless fairy tale out of nowhere one night (apparently he composed it in his head while walking the streets of London, laughing and crying as he did so). I would also like to thank Dickens for A Christmas Carol because without it, It’s a Wonderful Life would surely never have existed.    

Next in our festive Dickensathon was an evening discussion of A Christmas Carol with the Guardian and the wonderful Claire Tomalin, author of Dickens: A Life. Tomalin pinpointed the moment of Scrooge’s transformation as right at the start of the hauntings, where he looks back at his lonely childhood and says “poor boy” – by pitying himself as a child, he is able to acknowledge what’s wrong with him as an adult. Discussions also ranged over the persona of the Narrator, the child-wraith figures of Ignorance and Want, Dickens’s hatred of workhouses (including the fact that all domestic servants were sent to them once they were too old to work. Did you know that? Neither did I. Bloody Victorians), and the slightly unsavoury descriptions of some of the book’s women: see page 87 and you’ll know what I mean.

Which brings us to the last, and best, plum in our December Dickens pudding: a field trip to the almost indescribable wonder that is Dickens World in Kent (who had, very kindly, given us some tickets), about which we had worked ourselves up into such a state of excitement that by the time we arrived we were like toddlers after ten slices of birthday cake.
Marooned in the middle of nowhere, Dickens World is part kitsch theme-park wonderland, part a recreation of the best Dickens film set you have ever seen, with a haunted house, 4D – yes, 4D – cinema, pub, shops and, to top it all, a Great Expectations boat ride (I don’t remember this in the novel but then it’s a long time since I read it at school), and is so unreal that part of me wonders if I dreamt the whole thing. In Sam’s words:

“From an unprepossessing retail park by the dockyards, we entered Dickens World like Tiny Tim Cratchit on Boxing Day, eyes all aglow with the giant turkey (theme park) before him (us). It was utterly magical, from the roofs of Dickens's London to the costumed staff pointing you to all the delights on offer. I particularly liked screaming so loudly on the water ride that I almost blacked out. A hearty 9/10.”

I leave the last word with Becky, however: “Looking back, in the cold light of day, I am not convinced that the Great Expectations log flume was that good. However at the time, the fit of hysteria that Sam and Louise were having in the back of our log, combined with the novelty and charm of the all consuming Victorian world we had entered, made travelling at 0.5 miles an hour past an unconvincing model of Miss Havisham seem like possibly the most exhilarating thing I'd ever done. Henceforth, if I am invited to another Dickens attraction - the acclaimed Dickens Birthplace museum of Portsmouth perhaps, or the Dickens House Museum of Broadstairs, or the great Dickens Museum of London town - I will ask: 'Does it have a flume, sir?' And if the answer is 'No, sir', then I will not go, sir!”

And on that bombshell I’ll just say, in the time-honoured tradition, “God bless us, every one”, and wish you the merriest of Christmasses in the good old world!


Louise Willder, Copywriter

Previous Dickens posts:

Part 5: Nicholas Nickleby
Part 4: The Old Curiosity Shop
Part 3: David Copperfield
Part 2: Oliver Twist
Part 1: The Pickwick Papers

 

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Blog a Penguin Short 1: A Guest at the Feast

There is something very satisfying about reading an entire book in one sitting. Part of the pleasure of Julian Barnes’ Booker Prizing winning novel, The Sense of an Ending, is that you can spend a deeply pleasurable and indulgent afternoon devouring the book whole. You don’t have to worry about forgetting who said what when, of losing track of the plot as you nibble your way through the pages, piecemeal, when you get a moment here or there. The book is completely with you and the reading experience all the richer for it.

Last week we launched a new series of eBooks written with this experience in mind. The Penguin Shorts can be read over a long commute or a short journey, in your lunch hour or between dinner and bedtime, these brief books provide a short escape into a fictional world or act as a primer in a particular field or provide a new angle on an old subject.

To introduce you to the series, we are going to blog our way through all nine of the launch books, as we read through the series on our way in and out of work. To kick off, I’m starting with Colm Tóibín’s A Guest at the Feast. Celebrated as one of the finest novelists and short story writers of his generation Colm Tóibín, in his Penguin Short, turns his hand to his first piece of memoir, moving from the small town of Enniscorthy to Dublin, from memories of a mother who always had a book on the go to the author's early adulthood, from a love of literature to the influences of place and family.

To Work: 388 from Victoria Park Road to Embankment (50 minutes)


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It was bitterly cold yesterday morning. It proved difficult to keep my reader still as I tried to steal away the first few pages while keeping my morning vigil for the 388 to take me into work. It’s a good journey, I always get a seat and it allows for just shy of an hour of solid reading time. A Guest at the Feast opens with Tóibín's childhood in Enniscorthy, the story of how parents got together, his schooling (good at maths, giving ‘smart answers’ and being ‘no good’), childhood trips to the Wexford Town, and by the time I reach work, he is on his way to Dublin and University.


Back Home: 26 from Aldwych to Cassland Crescent (50 minutes)

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In Dublin, Tóibín’s love of the arts develops. There is a wonderful scene in which he meets Frederick May, a forgotten Irish composer, responsible for ‘one of the greatest contributions to Irish beauty which was ever made’. He continues, reflecting on his mother, an avid reader that adored ‘smart’ books and stayed clear of those she found ‘slow-moving’. And finally, to the importance of place and the influence it has had on him and his work. And that’s it, a perfect gem of a book and an insight into one of our most profound writers, completely enjoyed and digested on a single day on my way in and out of work.

 

Matt Clacher
Penguin General Marketing

 

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Doing Dickens – Part 5

We were giddy with excitement this month talking about Nicholas Nickleby in our Dickens readathon gang – in fact if I were a Victorian heroine I might have had to lie down with some smelling salts. The reason: we have two new recruits! Our slightly augmented group was unanimous in agreeing that, contrary to our slightly low expectations, and perhaps compared to last month, this is an action-packed romp of a read. Nicholas is a slightly two-dimensional but incredibly dashing and spirited hero; his mother is hilariously annoying, taking rambling to a sort of stream-of-consciousness art form; and the book brims over with a host of deliciously theatrical extras, hideous grotesques and dastardly villains. The whole thing felt to me like a very jolly outing to a pantomime, hissing at the baddies and cheering on the goodies – apart from the desperately sad descriptions of the dreadful school Dotheboys Hall (I was glad to discover that, partly because of this novel, many horrific Victorian institutions such as this were closed down. Good old Dickens).

Without further ado, here are the thoughts of our readers:

‘This was my first foray into the Dickens read-a-thon and I quickly discovered that there’s an INTENSE amount of love for Dickens amongst the diehard core of book clubbers. And with good reason: Nicholas Nickleby is an absolute hoot, the sort of book the word ‘rollicking’ was coined to describe. Nicholas himself is a bit, well, beige – but it’s a minor quibble when the supporting cast is this brilliant. Personal favourites: the Crummles family’s theatre troop; the hideously lecherous usurer Arthur Gride; and the profligate Mr Mantalini, who repeatedly wins back his long-suffering wife through his seductive power of his moustache. Best of all is Mrs Nickleby –the most amusingly irritating mother since Mrs Bennet wittered her way through Pride and Prejudice.’  Jess Harrison, Classics

‘For me there is not a dud character in Dicken's Nicholas Nickleby, and a wealth of heroes and villains to choose from, all aptly named. For example, the tight fisted, Wackford Squeers, head of Dotheboys Hall, a school for boys, which bears more resemblance to a POW camp than an educational establishment, whose finest moment, I feel, was when, while watching his son eat, he ' hugged himself to think that his son and heir
should be fattening at the enemy's expense'. Or equally, the detestable Sir Mulberry Hawk, who like a bird of prey encircles and finally launches himself upon innocent Kate (Nicholas's
sister). There was just the right amount of humour (mostly provided by Nicholas's babbling mother, going off on another irrelevant tangent) to keep me from despairing at the overwhelming villainy and greed of the various monstrous characters. Even in a world seemingly teeming with evil, this book still creates a strong urge to be transported back to a Dickensian London street scene and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it...Bring on 'A Christmas Carol'!’  Rowan Powell, Art

‘I'm constantly delighted by how easy Dickens is to read and how bloody enjoyable it is. The names (Vincent Crummles, the Cheeryble twins, Peg Sliderskew - Wackford Squeers, for goodness' sake), characters (Kate and Nicholas Nickleby's spirit, Mrs Nickleby's inane ramblings that are all too recognisable for anyone with a mother over fifty, the utter villainy of Uncle Ralph and Sir Mulberry Hawk, and the wonderful kindness of Tim Linkinwater and the whole Cheeryble family) and plot (Lord Verisopht's duel! John Browdie's appearances! BROOKER!) made this a joy to read. Although it's a lot more shallow than my much-loved David Copperfield and a bit of a Victorian fairy story, it still tweaks the nose of just about every other book I've read this year, so I award it a solid 8.1. ‘  Sam Binnie

‘Nicholas Nickleby is an action hero who saves babies from conflagrations, turns the whip on violent headmasters, and spoils for fights with anyone who threatens the honour of a lady. He's so winningly flirtatious and handsome that I felt sorry for his enemy: evil Uncle Ralph, the usurer, who is essentially Ebenezer Scrooge but nastier and without the ghosts. A hugely enjoyable read with endless brilliant characters, it left me feeling claustrophobic on behalf of Nicholas's sister. Her own good looks and honour bring her not adventure but peril. She can only wait around dutifully for most of the book, hoping that the benign gentlemen will rescue her from the preying lechers. I can't decide if this storyline is social comment or if Dickens quite liked things this way.’  Becky Stocks

Next time – a quick read of A Christmas Carol, before we head into the new year, and Barnaby Rudge...

Ken Kesey’s Magic Trip

In 1964, Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, set off on an epic road trip across America with his ‘Merry Band of Pranksters’. They shot footage of the journey, intending to turn the material into a film, but failed to do much with it (partly due to technological ineptitude, partly to being massively high on acid most of the way).

Now acclaimed documentary-makers Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood have lovingly pieced together the material to make a fascinating documentary about Kesey, his trip, and America at a time when the country was on the brink of huge changes. ‘As a film maker it was really interesting that there was all this footage they’d shot of the bus trip, because then you can dig into it’, says Gibney when I meet up with him to discuss the making of the film. ‘Kesey and the Pranksters had been trying to make a movie out of it for years, and never really succeeding. They had versions of it which were, to the outsider, almost unwatchable. You had to ingest massive amounts of hallucinogenic drugs and be, you know, tripping in order to be able to get it.’

The film opens with images of neat picket fences and Mad Men-esque housewives, and quickly plunges into sex, drugs (Kesey initially discovered LSD through an experimental programme financed by the CIA), and rock ‘n’ roll. Kesey and the Pranksters, says Gibney, ‘struck a blow for personal freedom at a time when you were expected to be a kind of cog in a bigger social machine’. There are clear echoes here of the themes Kesey had already explored in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is set in a mental hospital and tells the story of one inmate’s rebellion against institutional authority and repression. In both the book and in his own life, Kesey was interested in the tension between the individual and society, and the concept of personal freedom versus convention and tradition.

The book that looms largest over the film, however, is Jack Kerouac’s classic Beat novel On the Road (1957). As Gibney explains, ‘Kesey decides they’re going to take this journey across the country, and I think in part because he’d read On the Road, he understood those myths, and he was going to take that journey on the open road … he understood the poetry of it all, and he was the one along the way who was trying to make the reality fit the poetry, or to find a poetry in the reality.’ Fiction and real life become even more blurred when Neal Cassady – the basis for the character of Dean Moriarty in On the Road, ‘the holy con-man with the shining mind’ – decides to accompany Kesey on the trip.

Cassady is exactly as Kerouac describes him in the book:  you see him driving hair-raisingly fast, delivering non-stop quasi-philosophical monologues, infuriating and entrancing people in equal measure. It’s as if a character from fiction has suddenly stepped off the page and into the real world. Yet sometimes you have the impression the real Cassady is constantly trying to live up to the semi-mythical role he’d been written into. ‘You can see why he must have been attractive to Kerouac and Ginsberg as this kind of mythic action figure,’ says Gibney, ‘but also he becomes trapped in the fiction that they made for him, and so he starts inhabiting this role that now he has to keep writing, and playing, over and over and over again. The words are always new, but it seems like he keeps ploughing the same ground. All he can do is keep moving forward, keep driving the bus, over and over and over again.’

 

Kerouac himself also has a cameo in the film – he’s seen sulking in a chair at a party, thoroughly unamused by the japes of Pranksters. It’s a gripping moment: the author who at least partly inspired the Pranksters’ trip is so clearly uncomfortable with the legacy he himself had created. ‘He was a completely bitter guy. I mean he dissolved into alcoholism, and I don’t think he really ever reckoned with his own fame,’ says Gibney. ‘There were other books he wrote after On the Road and some of them were good, but he didn’t really know what to do with that fame. He got lost.’

Magic Trip, then, is essential viewing for anyone interested in the Beats, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and the era in general. What could have been an incoherent account of a rambling road trip, turns out to be an altogether more interesting (and often very funny) depiction of an innocent, experimental period in American history and a group of people who saw themselves as ‘explorers’ within a great American tradition. And, in the manner of all road trips worth their salt, the Pranksters ultimately discover that the ride itself is more important than their final goal of reaching New York’s World Fair. As Gibney puts it, ‘It was the trip that was the destination. It was not the place, it was the journey’.

Jessica Harrison, Classics Editor
   
Magic Trip is showing in cinemas from 18th November and will be available on DVD and Blu-ray from 28th November.

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Understanding Maus

Art Spiegelman’s Maus is one of the most significant graphic novels in existence; a fact signalled most obviously by its status as the only graphic novel to have won the Pulitzer Prize (in 1992, by special commendation). As if to underline this unprecedented, and as yet unrepeated, endorsement from the American literary establishment, the collected volumes of Maus grace every “Graphic Novels you Must Read” list that is worth its salt as well as several lists which do not restrict themselves purely to graphic novels as a medium.

What lifts Maus above other graphic novels isn’t purely its subject matter, depicting the Holocaust with the Jews as mice and the Germans as cats, but the complexity which Spiegelman instils into the text (far above and beyond my simple summing up of the animal analogy). The irony of the animal imagery is that Maus is also very effective at reminding the reader that what is being depicted is a true and human story, with real people and real lives behind the words and images.

[For me this is one of the most powerful moments in Maus, it portrays both the horrendous nature of the Holocaust, but also its effects on those of subsequent generations who did not live through it, but who are tasked with continuing its memory – Spiegelman is tired, depressed, stressed, but he’s also become trapped amongst the horrors which he has written about: the pile of discarded corpses, but also (and not often noticed) the watchtower and wire fence of the concentration camp outside his window, not to mention the at first ominous exclamation by an unseen seeming gunman off panel.]

The publication of MetaMaus further emphasises the human element of the book, sometimes unbearably so. It’s a hefty volume packed out with photos, preliminary sketches, interviews, and the original script to the comic, seeking to answer the three most common questions which have followed Spiegelman since Maus’s first publication: “Why the Holocaust?”, “Why Mice?” and “Why Comics?”. Some of this material is familiar, although it has never been so beautifully presented, or been placed in the company of so many other wonderful insights. The gem in the crown of the book is the interactive DVD which is included; on the disc is a digital version of the complete Maus, with audio commentary and sketches available for almost every page and panel at the click of a button. The content of the MetaMaus book is expanded tenfold, with extra pictures and material which would not have been possible to squeeze between the bindings of the text. Finally, and most haunting to my mind, are the audio clips of Spiegelman interviewing Vladek. To hear Vladek relaying the now familiar story of his life first hand in that thick Jewish-American accent sends genuine chills down my spine.

There is always the danger in supplementary material that it can lessen the impact of the original text, that it will strip away any mystique. However, rather than diminish the magic and power of Maus, MetaMaus complements it perfectly, offering insight at a historical, artistic, and that crucial human level. We come to understand a little of Spiegelman’s motivations, his way of viewing the world, and in doing so we come to appreciate and understand Maus that little bit more. It’s also a boon to those interested in the art and craft of comics, with step-by-step drawings leading up to the finished product showing the evolution not just of the art but the idea behind each panel, if you ever doubted the work that goes into something like Maus then MetaMaus will set you straight.

 

Glyn Morgan
Waterstone's bookseller and comix expert

 

Glyn Morgan is a Ph.D research student at the University of Liverpool. His research is concerned with non-mimetic narratives of the Second World War. This allows him to spend most of his time reading and thinking about texts which have always interested him: alternate histories, science fiction, and comic books. More about his research and academic life can be found at his blog.

 

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Doing Dickens – Part 4

'I'll beat you with an iron rod, I'll scratch you with a rusty nail, I'll pinch your eyes!'

I love the thought of someone's eyes being pinched. How is this even possible? And I love Quilp, the leering, deformed, lustful, sadistic villain of The Old Curiosity Shop, not only because he insults people in inventive ways such as this, but because his demonic energy brings the novel to life: appearing from the shadows like an evil Rumpelstiltskin, threatening to bite people, pinching the arm of his inexplicably pretty and 'well-trained' wife, trying to seduce poor little Nell, and even starting a fight with a dog, just for the hell of it.

The Old Curiosity Shop is the fourth in our Dickens readathon (see Parts 1, 2 and 3 here), which means we are officially a quarter of the way through – cue small whoop – and it is by far the strangest of the books I've read so far. Despite desperately wanting to prove Oscar Wilde's famous maxim wrong, I did find Little Nell intensely annoying: an angel in human form, little more than a cypher. It's the badness that really works in this freakish, carnivalesque, episodic, sexually troubling and morbid novel: the torturing of the starving servant 'the Marchioness'; Nell's grandfather terrifyingly transformed by his gambling habit; the random acts of cruelty. Here's what our other indefatigable readers thought:

"I worried at first that we'd been spoiled forever by the brilliance of David Copperfield (how can simpering, perfect little Nell compete with David's flaws, courage and good humour) but after a slow start, I did end up enjoying this one. It's so clearly written in serial form - the opening narrator falls away in chapter 3 and characters introduced as simpletons or drunken clowns become strong moral heroes by the end of the book - but Quilp the dwarf makes everything OK again. He's a wonderful, horrific little demon, popping up at windows, appearing in every shadow, eating eggs and prawns with the shells on and gulping boiling rum from the pan, and his strength and vitality and amazing language puts everyone else in the shade. The whole book is really strange and nightmarish, full of religious references and weird sideshow freaks living as functioning members of Dickens's society, with weird occurences and apparent non-sequiturs adding to the sense of dream-like oddness. Marvellous. Ignoring Nell's Cordelia act, I'd give this book a hearty 6.75/10." Sam Binnie

"Dickens hadn't thought through his plot when he published the first few bits of The Old Curiosity Shop, and some of the characters change personality half way, so it's strange as a novel, but understandable as a soap opera, and stands up to close scrutiny about as well as Hollyoaks. I'm reading the complete works of Dickens on my Kindle because I have weak arms, and the free version I downloaded is full of spelling errors. I don't want to sound too Penguiny here, but I enjoyed this odd, dreamlike story a lot more once I'd upgraded to the Penguin Classics e-book, with its introduction, notes, and habit of putting the right letters in the right order. My attention wandered a lot in the chapters starring angelic, tragic Little Nell, who is a mechanism designed to tug at the heart strings of your more sentimental Victorian soap opera fan. But Quilp, the sado-masochistic, perverse, antagonistic, evil plotter is the most vital, disgustingly enjoyable villain I have ever come across. He and Whisker the unreliable horse, who has far greater psychological depth than little Nell, make it all worthwhile." Becky Stocks

Next time: Nicholas Nickleby, and after that we'll be squeezing in a quick read of A Christmas Carol before the festive season.

What’s Eating Gordon Grice?

Here’s a question: what do Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love, Edward “Teddy-Bear” Grylls and the ill-fated Taiwanese zoo-keeper Mr Chang Po-yu all have in common?

Answer: parts of them appear on the cover of Gordon Grice’s The Book of Deadly Animals.

In the cases of Ms. Gilbert and Mr. Grylls, it’s the standard, exclamatory, gushing praise, alongside that of David Sedaris and Michael Pollan, presented between the customary inverted commas. In the case of poor Mr Po-yu, it’s his severed hand that features – between the jaws of 31-stone, 18-foot crocodile.

As the Daily Mail gaily reported in their article ‘The man who lent a hand to a crocodile’, the hand in question was eventually returned and reattached. In the world of animal savagings this was a good-news story, accompanied by a photo of Mr Po-yu waving merrily (with his other hand) from his hospital bed.

But the fascination with limb-severances, eviscerations and, for want of a better word, face-lifts at the paws and jaws of our co-habitants on this planet is as much a concern of the broadsheets as the tabloids and extends into a far more ghoulish realm. Since the polar bear attack that killed schoolboy Horatio Chapple in August of this year, no fewer than seven animal attacks (not to mention countless follow-up articles and videos), have graced the main news section of The Times and Guardian – wired in with, some might say, unseemly haste from the Seychelles, Yellowstone Park, South Africa and Australia.

Type ‘animal attacks’ into Google and I guarantee you will need to lie down for a few minutes to restore blood to your brain. But type ‘shark attack’ into the venerable BBC News website and 206 stories appear, 50 of them from within the last year. Is this really news?

Even if it isn’t, the desire to witness these appalling, meaningless, spectacular deaths may not necessarily be as prurient as we have been shamed into thinking. As Eric G. Wilson, Professor of English at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, argues in his superb forthcoming book, Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, the desire to slow down and turn one’s head when passing that fresh pile-up on the motorway is a healthy, necessary means of coming to terms with our mortality.

In the case of animal attacks, though, I think there’s something else involved: revenge. I loved Steve Irwin as much as anyone. He was so full of gung-ho, and his shorts were so remarkably tight, you couldn’t help but fall for him. I was genuinely shocked and upset when the barb of a bull ray stabbed him through the heart, killing him.

But then there’s Roy Horn, he of the somewhat freakish Siegfried and Roy stage show, who suffered the loss of a beating heart (twice), a stroke and a quarter of his skull when one of the tigers in their act ‘attempted to protect him when he fell’ – by biting him. Really? ‘Protect him’?

For those who suffer such attacks, we all have speechless sympathy. But animals are not our playthings. And as Grice argues, we humans are animals, too. We may be the most deadly of them all, but we’re as much a part of the food chain as any other. Man bites dog. Why should we be surprised when dog bites man? Or ferret scratches child? Or kangaroo punches walker? Or elephant destroys oil-tanker? (Grice has uncovered some truly bizarre encounters, and the book surely has one of the highest kill-counts of any non-war-related book in existence.)

Not all dogs are called Marley, care for the blind and rehabilitate traumatized war veterans; not all cats are called Dewey and have healing powers. Some seabass are ill-tempered, mutated and have laser beams attached to their heads. And if, like one mother, you smear your child’s hand in honey in order to have his picture taken with the big black bear (as Bill Bryson reports in A Walk in the Woods), is it any wonder what happens next…?

I think that, as well as shocking us into a heightened awareness of our mortality, these humbling reports remind us of our true place in the grand scheme of things. As Tony Fitzjohn, conservationist on the Adamson ranch, author of Born Wild, one-time victim of a lion-mauling and full-time rogue writes, also in praise of Grice’s book: ‘After all we’ve done to them, it’s great to see the animals getting their own back. When are we going to leave them alone?’ We are not the masters of our universe. At least, not all the time. In Grice’s book, it’s clear that we are rarely even masters of our own back yards.

 

Will Hammond, Editor

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TODAY: Inside Penguin – meet the designers on 6th October

UPDATE:

The designers – Coralie Bickford-Smith, Katy Finch, Richard Green, Benjamin Hughes, Lee Motley and Matthew Young – will be here TODAY between 1 and 2pm to answer your questions about what they do at Penguin: the second in a series of live Q&As to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how publishing really works. We’ll be responding to the questions you’ve already asked, and answering any new questions you have in the comments section, so get posting below.

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Penguin are setting up a series of live webchats with people working in different roles around the company, to give you an inside glimpse at how the publishing industry works and what we all do. Our last Q&A session with Penguin’s copywriters generated a lot of discussion, so we’re running another webchat next week on Thursday 6th October. This time you can meet the cover designers – the people with one of the most enviable but pressurised jobs in publishing.

Want to know how a Penguin cover gets designed, where designers get their inspiration from, what makes a good jacket, or anything else? They will be here on the Penguin Blog to reveal the secrets of their trade on Thursday 6th October between 1 and 2pm.

Our online panel, in alphabetical order, will be:

Coralie Bickford-Smith – a Senior Designer for the Penguin Press division, where she has created several series designs. She graduated from Reading University after studying Typography and Graphic Communication and has worked in-house at Penguin Books since 2002.

Katy Finch - Puffin Fiction Design Manager, designing covers and insides for a variety of titles including Roald Dahl backlist, children's classics and Young Adult titles. She has worked at Penguin for 6 years, and graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1999.

Richard Green - a Senior Designer for Penguin Press, working mainly on non-fiction titles. He has been designing covers for over 10 years.

Benjamin Hughes – Senior Designer, Media and Entertainment, Penguin Children's. Ben has worked at Penguin for 4 years, designing book covers, insides and new formats for a range of brands including Doctor Who, TopGear and the Harry Potter film franchise.

Lee Motley – a Deputy Art Director who works on a variety of books across Penguin’s General and Michael Joseph divisions, focusing largely on commercial women’s fiction titles.

Matthew Young – a Junior Cover Designer in Penguin Press, who graduated from uni last summer and started his job here in February. To date he has designed 16 book covers, mostly for non-fiction titles.

Get thinking about what you’d like to ask them, and feel free to start posting your questions now in the comments section below, so they’ll have plenty to get to grips with. Come back on Thursday 6th October between 1 and 2pm to see how they reply and to post any more questions you might have.

Louise Willder, Copywriter

Doing Dickens - Part 3

David Copperfield: not just an 80’s magician with a mullet but, as I have now discovered, one of the greatest novels ever created by a human hand. Ever.

Eagle-eyed readers may note that David Copperfield is not Charles Dickens’s third novel. We did things slightly out of order this month in our Dickens readathon due to circumstances beyond our control (and too boring to go into), but – what a happy accident, because it meant we got to discover the utter wondrousness of this novel.

I am in love with this book. I love its characters – straight-backed, stern Betsy Trotwood, a model for all womankind; charismatic, complicated wrong’un Steerforth; strange, furious Rosa Dartle, whose scar becomes livid as she gets angry; slimy Uriah Heep, whose fingers leave snails’ trails when he reads a book; David’s nurse Peggotty, whose buttons pop from her dress as she hugs him. I love the novel’s richness, the way everything bursts from the page, as if even a book of this size can’t contain Dickens’s inventiveness. Yet it has a brain as well as a heart. The characters change, they contradict themselves, they do incredibly stupid and incredibly heroic things. The dialogue is perfect and the writing is so clever: the interplay between David looking back and David his younger self means you could almost describe him as a bit of an unreliable narrator (indeed, I am sure that, had I ever got round to reading David Copperfield at university rather than watching Cracker, I would have written an essay on this).  

I had already started getting obsessed with Dickens, for example starting to describe everything I saw, read or heard as ‘So Dickensian’ (“look at that chimney sweep! How Dickensian!”). Now I know that Dickens and I are going to be friends for life. We are bezzies. Please, please read it, everybody!

Here’s why the others loved it so much:

‘Since I reached the final (six millionth) page of David Copperfield I've been reading this year's Booker Prize shortlist novels, and I keep thinking: 'Oh, come on!  Be better! Be as good as David Copperfield!' Even allowing for Dickens' habit of moralising about fallen women, this is one of the best and most enjoyable books I've ever read. The humour is sharp and feels completely undated. The major characters, like Mr Micawber, Betsy Trotwood are legendary and have pubs named after them for good reasons. The minor characters are all strong enough to inhabit whole books of their own; I loved the kind hearted funeral director, Mr Omer, who is troubled by the fact that he can never find a non-sinister way to ask after the health of his old or sick neighbours. David C. himself is so hopeless, likeable and convincingly real, that I rooted for him from the first page. I got so emotionally wrapped up in it all that I cried at my desk one lunch time, reading the bit about the death of a lapdog. I'm embarrassed about that in retrospect. A genius book, and a very funny one. No one should let the thickness of the spine deter them from trying it.’  Becky Stocks

‘I absolutely loved David Copperfield from start to finish. David is such a well-rounded, true, sympathetic character, and his whole world is one I was so delighted to visit. Although it's 850 pages in the edition we read, it never felt like a labour to read and was a real page-turner. I laughed and cried at Dora's silliness, Micawber's compulsive letter-writing, the kindness of the whole Peggotty family and the goodness of Doctor Strong and Mr Dick. The crocodile book! The donkeys! Tommy Traddles! Even Uriah Heep (one of the literary world's most dreadful villains) is utterly believable, evincing, if not pity, then certainly an understanding of how he became the man he is. Now I just need to find out Mr Micawber's punch recipe.’  Sam Binnie

Louise Willder, Copywriter