Comment on Can you read and understand this passage?
Moonweedbaddegrasse@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Yes I can. And disagree with virtually everyone else; I think that this along with virtually everything else by Dickens is absolutely top class writing. The meaning of every individual phrase isn’t the point, the whole passage just gives the perfect impression of the scene he is trying to convey. Also, remember much of Dickens’ stuff was written to be read out loud. Try that, it helps!
Tedesche@lemmy.world 2 days ago
All right, so taste aside, I would make the argument that Dickens’ writing is absolutely not “top class” by virtue of the fact that he was paid by the word and many have argued this contributed to his style of employing a lot of run-on sentences in his work. Don’t get me wrong—I do think he was a good writer, but I tend to agree that his verbosity detracted from the quality of his writing, not added to it.