Every week I review the New York Times Best Seller lists. I search for the next Dickens or Stienbeck or Michener. The quality represented by authors of their stature is hard to find. It is not fair to expect all to achieve that, but I do hope to find the twenty-first century equivalent of them. Most of all I want to read the next Charles Dickens. In my humble, but accurate, opinion, he is the greatest novelist of all time.
Dickens excelled for three reasons: strength of characters, intricate plots, and extraordinary detail.
If you ever heard of Christmas, you have heard of his characters in A Christmas Carol: Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and, of course, Tiny Tim. These are the characters at the surface of Dickens. The characters in Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Hard Times or The Old Curiosity Shop, I believe leave Scrooge in their wake. Uriah Heep or Daniel Quilp can send tingles down your spine. You hate those guys. As you read of Uriah Heep you feel the slimy sweat of his palms and it sends shivers throughout your being. You can pull these types of characters from almost all of his novels.
The plots are multiple and related. Nothing in DIckens stands alone. His writings are truly the finest of tapestries. If a character is introduced early, he may not be seen again for hundreds of pages, but if you wonder why they appeared, somewhere along the story you will learn their purpose. This is why Dickens is not a writer whose work can be started unless you have the time to read it consistently. If you start, put it down for a couple weeks and then pick it up again, you are likely to have lost track of a character or two and wonder where they came from or who they are when they reappear. You must keep up with your Dickens.
The detail in any Dickens writing is extraordinary. Of course, his books were serialized and he was paid by the word, which is part of the reason for the detail. But, every detail has meaning. You must not only read his works consistently, but concentration is required or you will be lost or confused by the details. The extraordinary quality is that each detail will help you understand his complicated characters. These three reasons for his excellence all work together–the characters create and explain the plot, which is revealed by the wonderful details, which work to explain and develop the characters.
I will continue to look for the twenty-first century Dickens. I know they are our there and it will be worth the reading to find them.