Hey, Slow Down for Setting

Once long ago, I attended a writing workshop which gave me a negative impression about Charles Dickens' style that took years to change back again. The presenter said that 21st century authors should shun Dickens' setting descriptions, or skim them only as an example of what no longer works. For since the great man existed long before the advent of the screen, he assumed his readers could intuit next to nothing about his story settings. Therefore he walloped them with slabs of tedious information dumps we don't need.

 I deduced that modern readers, and especially young ones, appreciate racy, pacy writing that scatters setting descriptions so lightly, they're more like fairy dust. Readers should hardly register that they're even falling at all. It's a compliment to readers' good sense, this presenter thought, to assume we can use our own imaginations to sense what a place must look like. I left that session thinking it all sounded very reasonable, and resolved to keep my own settings as brief and light as possible. 

It took re-reading several old classics for this blog to show me what a lot of excellent material we sacrifice with such a ruthless attitude. By sneering at every long, descriptive passage we come across, we are knocking back two great invitations. One is to slow down for the time being to a pleasant, leisurely pace. The frenetic speed at which we are urged to whiz through our days robs that from us. And the other invitation is to indulge our inner five senses in some of the finest works of written art. For I now believe that taking time to enter right into the heart of the setting is akin to gazing at some of the most breathtaking masterpieces on art gallery walls.   

 Here's an invitation right now, for you to join me for a few selected moments from  Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit. I read a disturbing article recently that in our current era, the average sentence length in fiction is gradually getting shorter to match social media trends. But if anyone can renew our affection for semi-colons, multiple commas and single sentences stretched out for as long as entire paragraphs, Dickens is surely our man. Let's give him a chance, because our attention spans and ability to exercise our minds' eyes are at stake. Here goes. 

MACRO VIEW: The Never-ending Swamp

Background: Two young men have alighted from a paddle steamer to their new home with utter dismay. Martin Chuzzlewit and Mark Tapley expected a thriving new township, but instead, this is what they get. 

'A flat morass, bestrewn with fallen timber; a marsh on which the good growth of the earth seemed to have been wrecked and cast away, that from its decomposing ashes vile and ugly things might rise, where the very trees that took the aspect of huge weeds, begotten of the slime from which they sprung, by the hot sun that burned them up; where fatal maladies seeking whom they might infect came forth at night in misty shapes, and creeping out upon the water hunted them like spectres until day; where even the blessed sun, shining down on festering elements of corruption and disease, became a horror. This was the realm of Hope through which they moved.' 

But hold on, there's more when the boys step outside to gauge what they have to work with.

'Their own land was mere forest. The trees had grown so thick and close that they shouldered one another out of their places, and the weakest, forced into shapes of strange distortion, languished like cripples. The best were stunted from the pressure and the want of room; and high about the stems of all grew long, rank grass, dank weeds and frowsy underwood: not divisible into their separate kinds but tangled all together in a heap; a deep jungle and dark with neither earth nor water at its roots, but putrid matter, formed of the pulpy offal of the two, and of their own corruption.' 

Not a pretty sight, but can't you just picture it?

SEMI-MACRO VIEW: The London Neighbourhood

Background: Mr Pecksniff and his daughters are heading for his favourite boarding house, run by Mrs Todgers, in her rather seamy section of the city. But at each visit, he forgets how difficult it is to navigate his way there. 

'You couldn't walk about Todgers' neighbourhood as you could in any other neighbourhood. You groped your way for an hour through lanes and bye-ways and courtyards and passages; and you never once emerged upon anything that might reasonably be called a street. A kind of resigned distraction came over the stranger as he trod these devious mazes, and giving himself up for lost went in and out and round about, and quietly turned back again when he came to a dead wall or was stopped by an iron railing, and felt that the means of escape might possibly present themselves in their own good time, but that to anticipate them was hopeless. Instances were known of people who being asked to dine at Todgers', had travelled round for a weary time with its very chimney pots in view, and finding it at last impossible of attainment, had gone home again with a gentle melancholy on their spirits, tranquil and uncomplaining. Nobody had ever found Todgers' on a verbal direction, though given within a few minutes walk of it. Cautious emigrants from Scotland or the North of England had been known to reach it safely by impressing a charity boy, town-bred, and bringing him along with them; or by clinging tenaciously to the postman; but these were rare exceptions and only went to prove the rule that Todgers' was in a labyrinth whereof the mystery was known but to a chosen few.' 

There's a few pages more of this. I admit to being initially impatient to move on with the actual plot, then realised that my restlessness made me just such another hapless wanderer, as frustrated with the written description as these characters were in time and space. So I made up my mind to slow down and enjoy the hopeless meandering, and it became a really fun read. 

SEMI-MICRO VIEW: Mrs Gamp's Bedroom

Background: The boozy, chatty hired nurse, Mrs Sarah Gamp, rents a room in the house of Mr Sweedlepipe the barber, and here is what you'll find between her four walls.  

'The bed itself was decorated with a patchwork quilt of great antiquity, and at the upper end upon the side nearest the door hung a scanty curtain of blue check, which prevented the Zephyrs which were abroad in Kingsgate Square from visiting Mrs Gamp's head too roughly. Some rusty gowns and other articles of that lady's wardrobe depended from the posts; and these had so adapted themselves by long usage to her figure, that more than one impatient husband coming in precipitately at about the time of twilight had been for an instant stricken dumb by the supposed discovery that Mrs Gamp had hanged herself.'

'The chest of drawers having been originally made to stand upon the top of another chest, had a dwarfish, elfin look alone; but in regard of its security it had a great advantage of the bandboxes, for as all the handles had been long ago pulled off, it was very difficult to get at its contents. This indeed was only to be done by one or two devices; either by tilting the whole structure forward until all the drawers fell out together, or by opening them singly with knives like oysters.' 

Once again, although nothing to do with the actual story, slowing down for setting offers benefits of its own.

MICRO VIEW: Mrs Betsey Prig's Pocket

Background: Mrs Gamp's fellow nurse, the large and gruff Mrs Prig, is expected for morning tea. Here is what she brings. 

'Mrs Prig, looking steadfastly at her friend, put her hand in her pocket and with an air of surly triumph drew forth either the oldest of lettuces or youngest of cabbages, but at any rate a green vegetable of an expensive nature, and of such magnificent proportions that she was obliged to shut it up like an umbrella before she could pull it out. She also produced a handful of mustard and cress, a trifle of the herb called dandelion, three bunches of radishes, an onion rather larger than an average turnip, three substantial slices of beetroot, and a short prong or antler of celery; the whole of this garden stuff having been publicly exhibited but a short time before as a twopenny salad, and purchased by Mrs Prig on condition that the vendor could get it all into her pocket. Which had been happily accomplished, in High Holborn, to the breathless interest of a Hackney-coach stand. And she laid so little stress on this surprising forethought that she did not even smile, but returning her pocket into its accustomed sphere, merely recommended that these products of nature should be sliced up, for immediate consumption, in plenty of vinegar.' 

So what do you think, having come out the other side? In over 800 pages, Dickens just keeps the scenes rolling, but those I chose represent his skill in highlighting macro and micro views alike. He can paint verbal brush strokes of sweeping panoramas and also home in on tiny details. And having convinced myself to slow down for the duration, I'm keen to continue with the occasional reflective, labyrinthine book, for they offer both rest and stimulation. And few things provide us with both at once.

PS, in case you wonder about the photo up the top, I took it down on the beach at Port Willunga, south of Adelaide. It's the wreck of an old jetty which may have been in its heyday while Dickens still wielded his pen.