Today in the Arts
Some pages from Dickens’ original handwritten manuscript of The Pickwick Papers are being auctioned at Christie’s in London soon. I would kill (ok, maybe not quite that extreme a measure, but almost everything else but) to get a scrap of one of those pages. Reading Charles Dickens at the ages of 8 and 9 and 10 taught me the fundamentals of good writing. He was a master of description and turning soap opera plots into astounding literature. To this day, he remains a sentimental favorite of mine. On cold, grey days or when I’m depressed, I inevitably pick up a volume of his, turn to the passages I love and always come away with the sense that all is really right with the world, no matter how bleak it may seem at the moment.
On another note, Stephen King and John Cougar Mellencamp are reported to be collaborating on a musical that will debut in Atlanta sometime in the near future. Well, I can’t help but think these are strange bedfellows artistically — I mean, the author of Everything Dark and the composer of “Our Country” teaming up???!!! But who knows. It promises to be a very interesting creative endeavor for the both of them and the result may be — ahh, words (for once) fail me. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
–phoebe kate