Dickens’ ‘David Copperfield’ far superior to postmodern novels

For most of my life, I had generally avoided novels written before I was born. They were stodgy. The language was outdated. They were boring. Even if they were significant in the historical sense, I saw them as the literary equivalent of reading the King James Version of the Bible.

I was wrong, of course, but I didn’t realize that until the last decade or so. I first started reading English translations of some Russian classics. I came to love Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” among others.

Then a friend introduced me to German novelist Hermann Hesse. To one extent or another, I found that I loved “Steppenwolf,” “Siddhartha,” “Narcissus and Goldmund” and “The Glass Bead Game.” I’ve read “Narcissus and Goldmund” four times so far — and I keep finding new things to appreciate about it.

But I was slow to appreciate the English writer Charles Dickens — and I’ve come to understand that this has meant depriving myself of a kind of literary joy that I haven’t experienced for a long time. I just finished the Dickens novel, “David Copperfield,” a few hours ago — and I’d like to suggest that this book is better than almost any fiction that’s been written since I was born.

I’m left feeling serious regret that I’ve had such a huge hole in my education about literature and human existence.

I had read Dickens’ novel, “Great Expectations,” when I was in the ninth grade, but since that was required for an English class, it didn’t make a huge impression on me at the time. I had found the story entertaining enough, but it wasn’t until I re-read the book a couple of years ago that I realized how little context I had had at the time to understand the things Dickens was showing me about human nature and about how we interact with one another.

I don’t know what made me pick up a copy of “David Copperfield” a couple of weeks ago. I don’t even know what I expected. In the first few pages, I was disappointed and wasn’t sure I’d finish the book.

But I soon found that Dickens was sketching characters that were larger than life, characters who illustrated universal truths about society. The book tells the story of the title character from his birth until he’s a mature and successful man, but the characters he encounters along the way teach lessons about good and evil in people. Some people start out good and are overtaken by evil inside them. Others start out as disagreeable and unhappy creatures who slowly become something different than the reader expects. And others display various combinations of good and bad — as well as wisdom and foolishness.

It’s about learning life lessons. It’s about morality and wisdom. It’s about learning to love and to forgive. And it’s about the sorts of inner demons that destroy people and keep them from finding joy and peace in their lives.

There are good and evil men. There are good and evil women. There are pointed observations about class and wealth — and about how many people look down on others who they see as beneath them — but without pretending that everyone of a certain class or station in life is always an oppressor or a victim.

There are characters that you know are evil from the beginning, such as Edward Murdstone and Uriah Heep. There are sad-sack characters whose choices constantly keep them down in life, such as Wilkins Micawber. There are characters who freely judge others for their sins, but who learn to love and forgive instead, such as Daniel Peggotty. And there are characters whose poor choices put them on the road to ruin and who find that others’ love can help save them, such as Emily and Martha.

I could go on and on about the characters, because there is a depth of human psychology in the novel’s characters that I hadn’t expected to find. I couldn’t help but realize what a keen observer Dickens had been of the human condition and of human nature. He understood people deeply — and seeing the heroes and villains of his book helped me come to a deeper understanding of things I had already known to be true.

I also couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that Dickens did all of this without feeling the need to make heavy-handed political points to align with leftist social philosophy. And that reminded me of why I now read so little current fiction. I don’t have any interest in reading material that’s simply thinly disguised political propaganda that’s intended to beat the drum for ideas straight out of the Frankfurt School or its nihilistic successors from existentialist philosophy.

If you haven’t read “David Copperfield,” I highly recommend you give it a try. (Here’s the hardcover and here’s an audiobook version. Both are affiliate links, so I’ll make a few cents if you buy through them.) You might not love the book as much as I did, but maybe you will.

And maybe you’ll be left pondering lessons from the book, as I’m doing tonight. The one that’s still on my mind — as it applied to David Copperfield and as it applies to me — is in this line: “There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.”

I already knew that to be true. You probably know it, too. But such lessons become even more clear when you see characters make bad choices that bring them unhappiness — and then you see them make wiser choice that leave your heart warmed for the happiness they’ve found.

And as you cheer for the happiness you see the characters find with wiser choices in the end, you might ponder — as I’ve done tonight — about the happiness that all of us hope to find for ourselves.