{"id":81093,"date":"2014-12-22T13:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T18:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=81093"},"modified":"2014-12-22T10:46:44","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T15:46:44","slug":"ditching-dickensian-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ditching <i>Dickensian<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year!<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Giving the lie to a critical crutch.<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_70567\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/dickens-drawing.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-70567\" class=\"wp-image-70567\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/dickens-drawing-1024x808.jpg\" alt=\"dickens-drawing\" width=\"600\" height=\"474\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-70567\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustration: Robert Ingpen<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Copies of Donna Tartt\u2019s <em>The Goldfinch <\/em>now bear an impressive gold foil sticker declaring it the \u201c<small>WINNER<\/small> <em>of the<\/em> <small>PULITZER PRIZE<\/small>.\u201d Before that accolade, though, critics had already branded the novel by using and abusing the adjective that\u2019s launched a thousand blurbs\u2014<em>Dickensian<\/em>. Despite, or perhaps because of, the ubiquity of the word in appraisals of the novel, such assessments are rarely issued without caveats. NPR\u2019s Maureen Corrigan apologetically notes that the term \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2013\/10\/31\/242105656\/dickensian-ambition-and-emotion-make-goldfinch-worth-the-wait\" target=\"_blank\">is one of those literary modifiers that\u2019s overused<\/a>\u201d; in the <em>New York Times Book Review<\/em>, Stephen King <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/10\/13\/books\/review\/donna-tartts-goldfinch.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">somewhat ruefully acknowledged<\/a> that he wouldn\u2019t be the last to employ <em>Dickensian<\/em> to describe Tartt\u2019s novel. He was right.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">For all this critical concurrence, it\u2019s less than clear what we mean by <em>Dickensian<\/em>, or, for that matter, by any adjective with a particular author at its root. Francine Prose leads her review of <em>The Goldfinch<\/em> with this very question: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nybooks.com\/articles\/archives\/2014\/jan\/09\/after-great-expectations\/\" target=\"_blank\">What do people mean when they call a novel \u2018Dickensian\u2019<\/a>?\u201d As Prose notes, a number of answers present themselves\u2014<em>Dickensian<\/em> can signify sentimentality, an attentiveness to the social conditions, a cast of comically hyperbolic characters, a reliance on plot contrivances, or even simply a book\u2019s sheer <em>length<\/em>. (I suspect one rarely means the relatively slim <em>A Tale of Two Cities <\/em>or <em>Hard Times <\/em>when one labels a novel Dickensian.) In other words, the proliferation of the senses of <em>Dickensian<\/em> makes one wonder if it, or other such words, are critically useful at all. As Cynthia Ozick has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newrepublic.com\/article\/117172\/kafka-decisive-years-and-kafka-years-insight-reviewed\" target=\"_blank\">recently complained with regard to <em>Kafkaesque<\/em><\/a>\u2014another perennial\u2014the word \u201chas by now escaped the body of work it is meant to evoke.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/04\/30\/ditching-dickensian\/\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! * Giving the lie to a critical crutch. Copies of Donna Tartt\u2019s The Goldfinch now bear an impressive gold foil sticker declaring it the \u201cWINNER of the PULITZER [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":688,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16464],"tags":[6763,13741,13743,1203,13742,7993,1267,12453],"class_list":["post-81093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2014","tag-a-tale-of-two-cities","tag-adjectives","tag-bill-deblasio","tag-charles-dickens","tag-dickensian","tag-donna-tartt","tag-pulitzer-prize","tag-the-goldfinch"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What Does \u201cDickensian\u201c Really Mean, Anyway?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Matthew Sherrill on Donna Tartt and giving the lie to a critical crutch.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ditching Dickensian by Matthew Sherrill\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 22, 2014 \u2013 We\u2019re out until January 5, but we\u2019re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we\u2019re away. We hope you enjoy\u2014and have a happy New Year! *\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-12-22T18:00:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Matthew Sherrill\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Matthew Sherrill\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Matthew Sherrill\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/f915b72dad5da4092a0b82aa30b9d4e8\"},\"headline\":\"Ditching Dickensian\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-12-22T18:00:39+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/\"},\"wordCount\":329,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/dickens-drawing-1024x808.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"A Tale of Two Cities\",\"adjectives\",\"Bill DeBlasio\",\"Charles Dickens\",\"Dickensian\",\"Donna Tartt\",\"Pulitzer Prize\",\"The Goldfinch\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Best of 2014\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/\",\"name\":\"What Does \u201cDickensian\u201c Really Mean, Anyway?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/dickens-drawing-1024x808.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-12-22T18:00:39+00:00\",\"description\":\"Matthew Sherrill on Donna Tartt and giving the lie to a critical crutch.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"\",\"contentUrl\":\"\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/22\/ditching-dickensian-2\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Ditching Dickensian\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. 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