![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 3 of 3. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by noa on December 20, 2003, at 15:37:08
Just saw a 'docudrama' on Dickens's life on public TV. An interesting guy. Rather manic, I think. Author, actor, performance artist, journalist.
I am now interested in reading some of Dickens's non-fiction--his reportage of the social conditions of his time.
They quoted a statistic that said that in one year (was it 1849 maybe?), half of the funerals in London were for children under the age of ten!
Another thing that interested me was that Dickens's wife suffered terrible depression, primarily post-partum, although she seemed always to be postpartum with 12 pregnancies!The portrayal also made Dickens himself out to be what I would consider rather manic, and perhaps somewhat OCD, too. And there were periods of agitation and what may have been depression, although they didn't say any of this. At one point he burned all of his personal papers, so there'd be no trace of his extramarital affair. But he burned ALL of his papers, including those that weren't even remotely connected to hints of the affair.
If Dickens had lived during the internet age, I think he definitely would have had a hard time, because he seemed at once a very public person but who also was fiercely secretive. It would have become very difficult to maintain his privacy and be so public a figure in the age of electronic communications, but I tend to think he would have been drawn to the internet.
Oh, and there was also a matter of intellectual rights that enraged him--apparently, his works were pirated in America because they weren't protected here by copyright laws. When he discovered this on a trip to NY, he was furious. I just found this fascinating, what with all the issues of intellectual property that are current now.
Posted by NikkiT2 on December 24, 2003, at 12:35:48
In reply to Dickens, posted by noa on December 20, 2003, at 15:37:08
Dickens is a fascinating character.. I'd like to read his non fiction stuff too.. maybe I'll hunt out a biog of him first though..
As for internet.. maybe he'd have loved it.. I could just see him keeping an awesome blog!!
Nikki x
Posted by noa on December 24, 2003, at 13:15:13
In reply to Re: Dickens » noa, posted by NikkiT2 on December 24, 2003, at 12:35:48
Would it be called BozBlog?
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Books | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.