What the Dickens: birthday wishes
I FOUND them dull, most of the thousands of words written to mark the 200th birthday of English author Charles Dickens.
It was almost as if he had been re-categorised in history’s library as a somewhat tedious celebrity rather than an author who used humour, pathos, social observation and clever word-play to agitate for social reform, especially the reduction of poverty.
The Christian Science Monitor ran with an Occupy tag-line on the link to its story: Charles Dickens birthday: a 19th century voice for the 99 percent’ Curiously, CSM did not feature the Occupy analogy prominently in the story layout.
The Washington Post ran with a defence of Dickensian verbosity. Whatever! WORDSMITH