Ode to Charles Dickens

   Of all the things my good friend L have argued about, I never thought that we
would go head to head on the issue of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."
My friend L says that it's his best work, that it shows Dickens' strength in rising
above the unhappiness of his beginnings.  To that I countered, a writer
writes what he or she knows.  Dickens knew hardship and struggle and heartbreak
and subsequently, his best work, in my view, is "Great Expectations."  We MIGHT run
into a man like Scrooge but anyone who has been in love before definitely has known
an Estella in their time.  On the Estella/Scrooge point, my friend L declared me an
unabashed cynic.  Well.... I AM a cynic, no question.  But I am a TEMPERED cynic.
I believe in the nature of  happy endings and  atonement and learning from the error of
one's way.  I also believe in the concept of perseverance.  To be fair though, I don't
believe in Dickens' vision of Scrooge celebrating in en mass after the ghosts have
had their say.  In light of the Dickens we saw in Oliver Twist and Great Expectations
and Tale Of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol seems like nothing more than wistfully
commercialized mysticism.  Odds are, if a figure like Tiny Time existed in reality, he'd
probably be gobbled by a politico looking for votes or a career spin maker looking
for headlines.  I can see it now.....a bloated and sweaty Jerry Lewis singing to
poor old Tiny Tim during the last minutes of his fabled telethon.  Oh how that tote
board would simply light up.  Then again, perhaps I'm being to hard on old
Charlie Dickens.  Perhaps he wrote A Christmas Carol as a balm to the bleak
circumstances that defined both his childhood and his entire adult existence.
Perhaps, but the concept of Scrooge suddenly making amends for his mistakes
still seems a bit far fetched to me.  If you were Bob Kratchet, would you like the
old bird in?