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Published: Nov 28, 2011
Category: Fiction
A year ago, I decided our daughter was ready for me to read to her --- the week before Christmas, sitting by a crackling fire --- a version of “A Christmas Carol” not dumbed down by Disney.
And why not? “Christmas Carol” is only 28,000 words. Over two or three nights, surely she could listen to Dickens’ holiday classic.
“This is boring,” she said, after just five minutes.
She was right.
Books change over time, and over 170 years, “A Christmas Carol” has changed more than most. The story is a slow starter. The language is clotted. There’s a lot of extraneous description.
So I decided to shorten the text.
My goal wasn’t to rewrite Dickens, just to update the archaic language, trim the dialogue, cut the extraneous characters and reduce the book to its essence, which is the story.
Here are 395 words from the Dickens text:
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street at the corner of the court, some laborers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke; a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of --
"God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
Here’s my revision of that passage --- in 107 words:
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened. The ancient tower of a church became invisible; it struck the hours and quarters in the clouds. The cold became intense. In the main street, the brightness of the shops made pale faces glow as they passed. Butcher shops became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant of pheasant and duck and goose, so it was next to impossible to believe that anyone anywhere had to think about such dull realities as bargains and sales. And then it turned foggier yet, and colder.
It was piercing, searching, brutally cold when Scrooge rose from his desk to close the office for the day.
I like to think "mine" reads better.Yes, Dickens produces lovely description --- but we've seen movies of 19th century london, we have a clue.
Turning a 28,000-word slog into a 13,000-word nail-biter, with illustrations by Paige Peterson that convey the feeling of London in 1843, is only the beginning. The bigger idea is to take the books we loved when we were young --- novels that today’s kids ought to read but can’t/won’t because the language is just too florid and the books are just too long --- and abridge them.
I hope to look back on “A Christmas Carol” as the first in a series of “modern classics” from Head Butler.
With your help, that is.