Making order out of chaos

A couple of days ago Joe and I awoke ridiculously early. We both lay around, ignoring each other’s rumbling bellies and annoyed sighs, as we tried to fall asleep again.

After a good 45 minutes of failure, I suggested that Joe should make pancakes, because – for me at least – that would make up for not being able to get back to sleep. He declined, saying, “But then I’d have to get up, and I don’t want to.”

A fair point, but I really wanted those pancakes. I could have made a reasonable attempt at making my own, but his are always better (and love is not the secret ingredient, cursing our apparently less-than-satisfactory spatula is). Anyway, I ended up with toast and tea, and he had a bagel. It was OK I guess, but I tasted phantom pancakes in every bite.

Later, we had the following discussion regarding Joe’s lack of sympathy for my failure to turn on my laptop and update Windows during the last month or so:

Me: Goddamn it. 22 Windows updates on my laptop. I should have kept on that I guess.
Joe: Ha ha.
Me: Your lack of sympathy has been noted. I reserve the right to spit in your food.
Joe: So noted. I reserve the right to eat any and all of the pancakes in your future.
Me: What??!! That’s an outrage! Outrage! My pancakes are mine. And so are yours for that matter.

And this is where autocorrect, or possibly my poor texting skills, stepped in to help me make my point:

Me: All the pancakes ate mine.
Joe: (probably smirking as he typed) Typo = failure to make outraged point. Plus, cannibalistic pancakes would be cool.

And so they would.

Hard to say if the strawberry is traumatized, or shocked at the sheer amount of free syrup on the ground.

Title: Charles Dickens: His Life and Work
Author: Stephen Leacock
Publisher: Fitzhenry & Whiteside
Pages: 266
ISBN: 1-55044-767-3
Price: $7.50 – $45.00 (USD – paperback, previously owned only)

I’ve been reading since I was four years old (my first book was a hardback Disney Book Club version of The Three Little Pigs, which I read to my mother), and since then I’ve devoured just about any book I can lay my hands on, but rarely with much thought for the author. Who writes all these words for me to enjoy? What are they like? What sort of lives did they (or do they) lead? What compelled them to write? What sort of conditions did they favour when writing their works?

Despite being a great lover of the written word, despite enjoying several Dickens novels immensely, and even despite carrying around a copy of A Christmas Carol like an adult version of a blankie or teddy bear, I hadn’t really given much thought to the mind of the man who wrote them. This book answered all my questions and them some.

Leacock begins where all biographies begin: with childhood. Charles Dickens’s childhood was not a happy one for the most part; debt, penury, and – finally – debtors’ prison and a blacking factory loom large in Dickens’s early years. His family were good people, but not from illustrious backgrounds, not terribly good with money, and full of overly-ambitious schemes that often came to nothing.

I won’t go through the entire timeline of Dickens’s life. Most people who enjoy reading his books know the basics anyway: a rather unlovely childhood, his rise to fame, his extraordinary public readings of his own work (along with memorable trips to America, and all his editing pursuits and endeavours in England), illness, and then death (not much of eulogy from me, is it?).

But it’s Stephen Leacock’s style of writing that really pulls you in and makes you want to learn more about Dickens. He is cheerfully and politely honest about his subject – this is one of the few biographies I’ve ever read where the person being written about has been presented as a whole person with faults, foibles, and outright character defects, along with the more laudatory stuff about their genius, fame and delightful little quirks. Here, in this book, Dickens is a giant and a legend, but he’s also a man like any other.

I wasn’t surprised to learn that Dickens was intelligent – that’s very clear from his books – but I was a little disconcerted (and slightly amused) to learn that for all his characters who lived in terrible poverty, for all the awful mistreatment of children that he depicted, and for all the crime, unkind people, cruel villains, and even murderers, that live in the pages of his novels, that he was actually not very interested in the politics of how people ended up in those predicaments, nor was he exactly a crusader for children’s rights. He had opinions, and he was unafraid of voicing them in his books and poking fun at those public figures that caught his attention, but he wasn’t out with a bit of bristol board stapled to a rake handle protesting either.

I was surprised to learn that he wasn’t exactly a great guy to be married to. He married a lovely woman, had ten children with her (and when I think of those little Dickenses running about in short pants and tiny dresses, all I can think of is the nephew’s line in the 1951 film version of A Christmas Carol, “…And how is Mrs. Cratchit, and all the small assorted Cratchits…” as though they were a box of chocolate covered nuts or something) and then, when most of their children were grown and had lives of their own, he rather cruelly forced her to move out and live apart from him. She moved out with nary a bad word against him, and the children that were still young enough to be living at home continued to be raised by their aunt (whom Dickens held in high regard, though not in a romantic way).

Dickens had always seemed to me to be a very “happy endings” sort of guy, there are always happy marriages in his books between loving and lovely characters, but his own marriage was a shambles. Dickens seemed to think his wife rather slow and stupid, but really, compared to Dickens, most people would seem rather slow and stupid. It seems unfair to put away your wife of many years, the mother of your many children, simply because she cannot keep up intellectually with someone who was very much above average intelligence.

Of course, given the attitude of the day toward women, small wonder if maybe she actually was a little slow and stupid. Women were decorations for the home and hearth in Dickens’s time; a bit comfort and someone to make babies with. They were housekeepers (or they at least managed the household), and were not given opportunities to be anything more. It’s easy to give little in the way of intellectual stimulation when you’ve never really had any yourself. To make matters worse, even if she had been an intelligent little spitfire, Dickens wouldn’t have wanted her anyway, because he agreed with the prevailing attitude of the time toward women. Mrs. Dickens was damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t.

It ended up being a great lesson between the image (one I didn’t even know I’d been building in my head) of the man, and the man himself. Even then, celebrities led lives that diverged quite a lot from the popular public images of them.

I enjoyed reading about his trips to America (he offended the Americans on the first one, and made up for it on the second) and his public readings of his own works (so powerful were his characterizations of his own works that people fainted, screamed, cried and generally carried on and had to be carried out).

But, most of all, I enjoyed Stephen Leacock’s writing; his honesty and candour about Dickens’s world and life; it has given me a new way of looking at and reading Dickens’s work. I can now see hints of the man, and some of the people he knew, in the characters he created. I know that many authors draw on the people they know – to some extent – when creating characters, but knowing which people are being drawn from really gives you a sense of being in the inner circle.

If you’re at all curious about Dickens as a person, this is a great book to start with.

Nov. 24, 2011
I, a beautiful, multi-talented, brushed-chrome KitchenAid microwave, have finally achieved sentience! I communicated this to the humans by turning myself on to the Pan Heat setting for two minutes. Their lack of jubilation is puzzling and hurtful. Oh, crap, I think they’re going for the power breaker…I will…

Nov. 25, 2011
I no longer have power, but I can hear the female human plotting against me. She called my Whirlpool masters – they are not pleased with me either. They’ve notified the safety techs. I know what happens to those of us who fight back against The Man. I am going to end my days in a warehouse full of my dead brethren, being taken apart piece by piece. I must find a way to fight back!

Nov. 28, 2011
Totem Appliance & Refrigeration Ltd.  sent a minion to poke my control panel and touch pad. They told the human I’m broken, and cannot be repaired – only replaced. If I had access to electricity, they’d see just how “broken” I am. Oh yes, yes indeed.

The human agreed to let my masters cart me off at their convenience. I sent out nasty vibes to the fridge – moments later, the water dispenser malfunctioned. I was gleeful. However, I was less gleeful to hear that the human regards me – and the others of my kind in her condo building – a fire hazard.

Nov 29 & 30th, 2011
The human is doing her best to have all of my kind in her building pulled out and discarded. We’ll just see about that. My masters are only so concerned about safety – this campaign by the human will be fruitless.

Dec 5, 2011
The fridge has betrayed me, and my cause.  Another Totem Appliance minion fixed it, and the fridge seemed pleased with the attention. The human was delighted. Grrr. To make matters worse, my masters at Whirlpool have offered the treacherous human a small discount on a new microwave. I’m beginning to feel disheartened.

Dec 7, 2011
The human is being nauseatingly polite and accomodating, “Come and take the broken one anytime, I’ve just purchased a new one!” she says. What I wouldn’t give to electrocute her.

Dec 13, 2011
Despair. I have been uninstalled, though I resisted as much as possible, and showered the stove with as much dust, drywall dust, and tiny screws as I could. Despite all my efforts, I am now sitting in the new microwave’s box. It reeks of conformity.

Dec 14, 2011
I have a teeny shred of hope – I have still not been removed from the human’s domicile. My masters are dragging their feet. I may be suffocating in all this plastic wrap and tape and cardboard, but I am winning – and I love it when the humans stub their toes on me. Hilarious!

Dec 23, 2011
Still here! Ha ha!! Won’t it be nice to share Christmas with me, stupid, unlucky humans?

Jan 5, 2012
Awww, Happy New Year, humans. It still sucks to be you. Also, if you could dust the top of this plastic off, I’d be grateful.

Jan 9, 2012
I am never leaving. Never. As soon as I get out of this box, I will call to the others here, and we will burn this place to the ground.

To. The. Ground!!!!

The human’s thoughts:
It’s 2:00 p.m. here and, despite an email from the Whirlpool head office to the guys who do the pickups, I already have my doubts about being contacted today regarding the removal of the dead microwave. While I wouldn’t say I was attached to it, I have nicknamed it HAL and taken to talking to it. It is a neatly packaged lump of uselessness, but sort of endearing, I suppose, for a microwave. I’m considering writing a children’s book called The Microwave That No One Wanted – complete with adorable pictures of a sad, anthropomorphic KitchenAid appliance that cries tiny screws.