A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843)
Retro Review #1: You’ve seen one adaptation or another, maybe several, but if you haven’t read the original, you don’t realize what you’ve been missing.
A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843)
+ Novella £ 🎖️⭐ by Charles Dickens ⭐, 166p
A+^
GPA: 20.00 (A+^) [n/a] / HOF: 42 [n/a]
EQ 👍A++ | 📖A+ 👥A+ 📽️A+ 🎼A+
DW 😎😎10.1 | 🌚11 🌝10
POPCAP 💯n/a 🍿n/a 🧢n/a
L-R 💻⬇️2️⃣ 👀⬆️3️⃣ 🛐⬆️3️⃣
I must confess to being somewhat of a Scrooge when faced with yet another of the seemingly endless adaptations of this work.
It’s soooo overdone and I’ve seen so many adaptations, that I couldn’t remember whether I’d read the original or not.
Nope. Definitely not.
What a strange experience to finally read it! A delightful mix of the very new and the familiar. There are, of course, many lines of dialogue repeated in many, if not all, adaptations, and also of course, the plot could hardly be more familiar.
What I was not expecting was an earlier incarnation of Douglas Adams! One of the early paragraphs reminded me of the opening of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where the Vogon ship hung in the air “in much the same way that bricks don’t”.
There was some outstanding Dark Whimsy early on in the novella, a strong core of Grave Seriousness at the center, and a That’s Just Right ending which is the part most often reproduced faithfully in the many adaptations.
If you’ve only seen various adaptations, and never read the novella, be assured that it far exceeds most of them in many ways. The Dark parts are darker—the Whimsy is more whimsical. The heights and depths of joy and sorrow are more profound. The message of redemption is not just generic, but is inextricably intertwined with Christmas and the one “who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”
So absolutely there’s some great writing here, and given the reputation, I’m not at all surprised. It’s worth experiencing first hand if you never have, and I’ll look forward to reading more Dickens in the future.
I’m glad we started our journey with a whiz-bang success, but I fear that the technology problems of the early film industry will make it hard for the brief black-and-white silent short films we’re visiting to even come close to living up to the novella.
And none of them were on any of the Best Christmas Movies lists I checked, so visiting them will be just a moderately quick history lesson for context.
Onwards!
+ last read (2) 2025-01-27, dS
+ first read 2024-12-01, dS
+ 🙏👻🎈⛄🎄🎅💀🦄🧙😥
+ ✅1️⃣ OK for teens and adults. | NR
+ 😡+1 😵💫+1 🤬+3 🤭+2 🫣+1
+ 👀⬆️3️⃣
+ ✝️+4 ➕✝️✝️✝️🎁😇😇😇❤️❤️💒🩸💜🩷
+ ✡️+3 ➕✡️✡️✡️🌗💎💎
+ 🗽+1 ➕🏦🟨
Originally posted to text group 2024-12-02
Re-reviewed 2025-01-27
Last updated 2025-04-14
Read: A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.
Note: This work is in the public domain.
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Text Group Comments:
J: I heard the quick way to check whether you're looking at an abridged version of A Christmas Carol is, the abridged versions always remove the humorous aside at the beginning. Morons.
J: (IIRC Mom told me that little fact.)