I am 280 pages through Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers and I do not think I will finish it as long as I am unemployed. This might seem paradoxical as, in the words of Confucius, ‘he who has time should be able to finish a big book’. This has not been the case.
I began reading The Pickwick Papers on February 12th. It was a lovingly chosen birthday gift from Liv who, having witnessed my fascination with Charles Dickens bloom whilst we were in Australia (it was only when I was away from England I found a newfound love for English), selected it on the basis it is considered his funniest novel.
It is also 800 pages with 318,352 words. Last year I took over a month to read Dickens’ longest novel, Bleak House. That behemoth was close to 1,000 pages and over 370,000 words, with its drawn out narrative metaphorically impaling the tediousness of England’s court system. Still, I waded through its meticulous prose whilst I was working full time. So what is going on with my reader’s block of The Pickwick Papers, now two months of unemployment in?
Let us start with what may seem like the obvious question: is it good? The answer will surprise you – yes, yes it is. The Pickwick Papers concerns Mr Pickwick and his three colleagues Mr Snodgrass, Mr Tupman and Mr Winkle (the Pickwickians). They head out from Rochester to explore Kent and London, meeting a variety of memorable characters and hearing many an anecdote. The novel is a document of all these episodic adventures. It is not that I am not enjoying it either, for I am; The Pickwick Papers is a pleasure to read, wrought with the kind of advanced vocabulary that, were I ten years younger, I would have stolen and then awkwardly crowbarred into an English lesson (Somnolency! Auricular! Stentorian!).
This was Dickens’ first novel, published in 1836. Well, 1837 for the full book as it originally began life as a monthly serial from March 1836 – October 1837, with a couple chapters released each time. As such, the novel reads as a wonderful collection of short stories that do not fully rely on the adventures prior to make sense – a Georgian era Clone Wars, if you must. This gives The Pickwick Papers a sense of light-hearted mischief but it has also lacked a narrative thrust to make it a page-turner like A Tale of Two Cities (okay, page-turner may be more apt for a thriller like I am Pilgrim than a Dickens piece, but that is still a more exciting novel).
What does this have to do with my unemployment though? I have been existing for four months without full-time work. I wake up tired and I go to bed awake. I watch a film most days but no longer rush to review it – I have the whole next day to do that. I watch snooker. I watch Stephen Hendry’s cue tips when I have lunch and then apply them to 8 Ball Pool. I write, or try to. I apply for jobs. I click ‘white British’, ‘heterosexual’, and ‘male’ on my job applications with a misplaced sense of shame, though sometimes I play coy and opt for the ‘Prefer not to say’ option on the religion question – let them think I am a Scientologist. I tutor English and I dig vegetable patches. I check my bank account before I see my friends once a week to see if it will be a pint, a half-pint or a tap water. I exist outside of time and space; I am not paying National Insurance but neither am I on benefits. I have no dentist and my GP is still my university one. If I vanished, I would not even register on the system. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist…
Through most of this period of limbo I have had The Pickwick Papers on my desk and by my bed. The front cover shows a bespectacled gentleman sitting atop a horse and cart with a worried face, his companions sitting behind sporting similar expressions with mouths like Cheerios. They look uncertain as this is the beginning of their journey. What comes next they do not know and cannot predict. With no overriding story or mission facing them, they too exist outside of time and space. Their task is to be present and write what they see without thinking ahead, whilst also rarely looking back. They do not plan where to go next month because they may end up in some other adventure that would be incompatible with the future. This is an abysmally basic analysis of an enduring piece of literary entertainment that champions the joys of England’s rural communities, but I had to make it mirror me somehow. I would not have a post otherwise!
The Pickwick Papers fits nicely into my rucksack. It came with me to the critics screening of Godzilla x Kong. It came with me on the train to a job interview in Whitstable, whispering encouraging thoughts through the zip. It wants me to get a job; jobs give structure, structure gives time management, time management motivates reading. I have taken the book with me on many of my train journeys to London. One notable time I headed up to Waterloo on a Friday afternoon and gave the book’s spine a good stretch on the train and, with the cheapest half pint, in a hip pub called Vaulty Towers. I spent the evening at another pub with little intention or foresight of ending up in a Cuban nightclub, yet I was soon queuing outside one with a coat and rucksack. The bouncer searched my bag and pulled out The Pickwick Papers, remarking, with the same unapologetic London charm that Dickens would have relished to hear, “what the fuck is this? War and Peace?” The book, and the satsuma next to it, was enough evidence for the bouncers to trust our entire group.
Through all these adventures the Pickwickians have followed me and I am still 3/8ths of the way through their story. Think of Theseus’ ball of string as he ventures into the labyrinth to find the minotaur, unspooling it as he goes to mark his way out. That is what the book is to me: it is a comfort to have on my person, a symbol of trust that will not lead me anywhere but, through it, I have a mildly pretentious first Object of the Year to help me find a job (which I guess is the minotaur in this analogy).
For A Few Thoughts More 