Virginia Woolf: Review of David Copperfield

I just ran across this fascinating review of my favorite novel by famed English writer Virginia Woolf.  I suppose I find it fascinating because it oddly parallels my own feelings about the book and Charles Dickens, its author.

In the review she shows great disdain for Charles Dickens, the man.  And clearly he was far from perfect.

She also criticizes his novels generally, with an observation similar to my own, that his great strength in creating rich characters comes at the detriment of great storytelling:  "With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up, not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people on the fire."

Reading Dickens' novels for me roughly simulates panning for gold.  So much humdrum (albeit littered with perfectly lovely "handful's of people thrown on the fire") to sift through, before a blaze of brilliance drops ones jaw, with a piece of literature that stands apart from everything else.

Such is the case for me, and Ms. Woolf apparently, with David Copperfield.  I've enjoyed all of his novels in various degrees, but Copperfield stands on a pedestal of its own, set apart from all other novels by any author that I know of.  She writes of the danger of solely relying upon characters, then...

But that danger is surmounted in David Copperfield.  There, though characters swarm and life flows into every creek and cranny, some common feeling - youth, gaiety, hope envelops the tumult, brings the scattered parts together, and invests the most perfect of all the Dickens novels with an atmosphere of beauty.

This only makes me want to read Copperfield yet again.  And maybe some Woolf, as well.