Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Wednesday Quiz on Vacation

It's bye-week for the Wednesday Quiz, with top three winners UnWise Owl, la gringissima, and DrSchnell enjoying their various fabulous prizes and four and fifth place winners Kadonkadonk and Mrs.5000 seething with rage that only the top three spots get prize.

But while we wait for the Quiz to get its act together, here's something we can all endure together.

Dickens v. Bulwer-Lytton

Remember when I read Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii a while back? No? Well, that's cool. But in the ensuing discussion, B-L was compared and contrasted with Charles Dickens, and eventually a forceful recommendation was put forward that I should read Great Expectations.

So I read Great Expectations. Or, rather, listened to it on cassette tapes(!). And it was terrific, for the most part, with a somewhat muddy final reel that led to an ending which was, well, reasonably satisfying but also a little sappy. At which point, the reader on my cassettes said "Now, that's the ending that Dickens' buddy Edward Bulwer-Lytton talked him into writing. The following is the original ending that Dickens changed on Bulwer-Lytton's advice." Then, he read an alternative ending, a little darker, a little less improbable. Far out.

This led me to Google, naturally, where I ignored the little Pac-Man game in favor of checking out the relationship between Dickens and Bulwer-Lytton. And that's how I found the:


I haven't taken it yet. And obviously there are problems with this kind of thing -- how on earth could the guy who put it together resist the temptation to cherry-pick Bulwer-Lytton's best nuggets and Dickens' worst clunkers? But, I'm going to take it today. Let's see if we can really tell the difference between the guy who is still revered as a cultural touchstone, and the guy who has become a literary laughing-stock.

12 comments:

Jennifer said...

All righty! I took the quiz. I think that if I had actually read any Bulwer-Lytton myself (besides the quotes from your comparison), the results might have been different. (There's actually I thought was funny about the quiz you might notice after you take it....)

It reminds me of the time (towards the end of the semester in an upper-division Shakespeare class) one of my students put three passages of iambic pentameter on the board by different authors and asked the class to vote on which one was Shakespeare. Shakespeare came in last; the other two were John Fletcher and some verse the student had written trying to sound like Shakespeare. (I forget whether the student's poetry or Fletcher's came in first.)

By the way--I think Dickens is a very interesting figure for discussions of the canon....

Michael5000 said...

Well, I myself got 92%, baby! It probably helps to be coming off of reading Bulwer-Lytton and Dickens. And being lucky.

fingerstothebone said...

I thought this was a quiz ABOUT vacations...

Michael5000 said...

fingers: For 20 points apiece, what are five places you'd like to go on vacation?

fingerstothebone said...

Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt.

I win! I win! I win!

Elaine said...

Morocco? Algeria?
You can't win with those destinations!

Galapagos Islands; Fiji; Nova Scotia and PEI; Panama City, FL; Bahamas Out Islands.

Michael5000 said...

Elaine: I'm afraid fingers is correct: Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt are in fact the places that fingers would like to go on vacation. Fingers thus wins the entire contents of my offshore bank accounts. Also my firstborn.

fingerstothebone said...

And with my winnings, I can now add Tunisia to my itinerary!

Elaine said...

fingers: Couldn't you go to North Korea instead, and talk some sense into the leadership and the army?

fingerstothebone said...

I don't believe they belly dance in North Korea...do they?

Michael5000 said...

NO BELLY DANCING!!

fingerstothebone said...

Well, there you have it then, I'm so not going to North Korea. On the other hand, some belly dancing might do Kim Jong Il some good.