Some Words On "Oliver Twist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                              One is never too old to learn, darlings, and coming to "Oliver Twist," after more than twenty years, and on a third reading, I learned much.  Nancy, the novel's tragic heroine, and Nancy Drew are perhaps literature's two most famous Nancys.  And what was up with Charles Dickens here?  It has been argued for years whether he was or was not anti-Semitic, but, really, a writer of his brilliance, whom I revere, should have come up with better synonyms for Fagin than "the Jew."  How about scoundrel, thief, liar, evil, greedy, grasping, clutching.... you get the picture.  I am as far from Dickens as they come, and I just came up with some alterations.  So, I wonder what was going on here?

                               I did not realize how early in Dickens' career "Oliver Twist" was.  It was only his second novel, following "The Pickwick Papers," and was published in 1837.   It is the first of what I call "His Big Three;" the others being "David Copperfield (1850), and "Great Expectations (1861).  These are the central works anyone should read.  Others might argue for "Bleak House," "Dombey And Son," even "Our Mutual Friend," (which I need to do a re-read of) but those are on a lower tier, at least in my estimation.  And I am speaking as one who, by now, has read the entire Dickens oeuvre.

                              Regarding "Oliver Twist," most people think they know the story, but they really don't.  Many know it strictly from the wonderful 1968 musical film version of it, even though it skips over characters like Rose Maylie, and the interconnected lives of subsidiary characters connecting Oliver's life to everyone else.  And while Nancy's murder by London Bridge gives her death an even more tragic theatricality in the aforementioned film, she is actually killed in the home she shares with Bill Sikes, who beats her to death.  Nevertheless, Nancy and London Bridge are good enough to earn a place in history, and a real-life locale to be visited, as that is where she and Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow met to arrange Oliver's subsequent delivery there.

                                If the novel just followed the musical, it would eliminate over 100 pages from the novel.  And while I could place all the songs, I did not find one, in the novel, for "Oom- Pah- Pah," which many have heard me rave about on here.  At least, the way the musical film handled it.

                                 Re-reading "Oliver Twist" was a revelation.  Darlings, for those having not read it, it's time one did.  And I maintain, when he grows up, if he has a daughter, Oliver will name the child Nancy, after the brave, courageous woman who saved his life.

                                  Long live Charles Dickens!  And Shani Wallis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!