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SFReader Forums > SF Fiction and Art > Right Now I'm Reading.... > Great Expectations

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R David Skinner
Stablehand

Date Joined Apr 2006
Total Posts : 42

Posted 4/29/2006 10:17 AM (GMT -4)

I was talking to Pitch last night at a literary event out at the University of Illinois at Springfield and he told me about an essay he'd written in a Dickens & Hardy seminar. He came up with the crazy notion that Pip is a schizoid serial killer. I've been reading GE again with that thought in mind, and it's a blast. What a weirdly delightful spin on a classic! He claims that Pip is actually Orlick in another personality, and that Pip's strange episodes of "mind-fever" are psychotic episodes in which he slips from the known personalities into the kind of blackouts common to schiziod pathologies - dissociative disorder.

Can you imagine reading Great Expectations as a mystery/horror novel? Look into it if you've a mind for strange twists. It's a hoot!

R David Skinner

Independent Scholar, Philosopher, Reviewer

darkbow
Rabbit lord

Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1574

Posted 4/29/2006 4:09 PM (GMT -4)

Hmmm ... don't remember exactly when GE was first published, but could Pip be Jack the Ripper?

R David Skinner
Stablehand

Date Joined Apr 2006
Total Posts : 42

Posted 4/29/2006 8:56 PM (GMT -4)

Originally published in 1860-1861. When was Jack Ripping through London?
I think someone at one time actually suggested that Dickens fit the bill, but the way I heard it led me to believe it was mostly an urban legend meant to spark book sales. I don't recall any prostitutes or 'women of negotiable virtue' getting killed in the book.
It is remarkable that anyone whom Pip describes as treating him unjustly is conveniently killed in the novel. I'm skimming it again even now.

I can never really tell how serious Pitch is; he often seems to be trying to pull one over on me. Almost like he's challenging me to debunk his theories, or research them and finish his essays for him. At times it seems he does me great disservice in doing so as it clouds my mind with speculations unnecessary for me to bother with while I'm otherwise producing scholarly papers for lazy undergrads with more disposable cash than moxy and/or scholarly fortitude. . . . (not that I would condescend to sell research papers for students to fraudulently call their own; that would be both unprofessional and unethical). What's a good charge for a 300 level college essay these days? (It pays better than most zines - but it IS unethical!)

R David Skinner

Independent Scholar, Philosopher, Reviewer

darkbow
Rabbit lord

Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1574

Posted 4/29/2006 9:09 PM (GMT -4)

Jack was operating in 1888, so maybe an older Pip could have been him.
Which leads to ... Pip the Ripper, or worse ... Jack the Pipper.

R David Skinner
Stablehand

Date Joined Apr 2006
Total Posts : 42

Posted 4/29/2006 9:22 PM (GMT -4)

That's really spooky, then, because Chuckie died in June 1870! I guess maybe it was his coming of age as a vampire? There's a tale to tell. Pip, on the other hand, would only have been twenty-something! Only he was fictional and hadn't the oposable thumb necessary to weild the deadly blade. Perhaps it was highly advanced chimps from Siera Leaone?

Orlick backwards is kcilro, close to kilor, close to killer. Pip is one of six children on the most poxed side of a die. I'm trying to figure out which six characters Pip really is, and who he kills that is not one of his own dysociative associates. Pitch did convince me that Pip murdered the old woman he threw in the fire - Miss Havisham - in chapter 49 as well as likely his own sister.

R David Skinner

Independent Scholar, Philosopher, Reviewer

darkbow
Rabbit lord

Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1574

Posted 4/29/2006 9:37 PM (GMT -4)

Jeez. Pip is starting to sound like Steerpike from the Gormenghast books. But sicker.

Swashbuckler
One-man sword-and-sorcery machine

Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 1227

Posted 4/29/2006 11:32 PM (GMT -4)

Jack the Pipper ... now, that's funny. You guys might actually get me to read Great Expectations again, and I thought nothing could ever do that.

aka Steve Goble, formerly known here as Red Viper

www.stevegoble.com

Look for: The Mask Oath in Lords of Swords II; The Grey Mother and The Bloated Curse in Flashing Swords; Snake Eyes in Freehold: Southern Storm and Zeerembuk in Clash of Steel 3: Demon.

darkbow
Rabbit lord

Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1574

Posted 4/30/2006 12:46 AM (GMT -4)

Steve, please don't. My feelings about Dickens, especially "Great Expectations," are well documented. I'd rather read the Silmarillion again.

Swashbuckler
One-man sword-and-sorcery machine

Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 1227

Posted 4/30/2006 11:10 PM (GMT -4)

I actually like Dickens quite a bit -- especially "Tale of Two Cities" -- but I always hated "Great Expectations." I still hated it, even when they made it into a modern-era movie and Gwynyth Paltrow got naked.

erazmus
Master

Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4474

Posted 5/1/2006 2:18 PM (GMT -4)

It was Gwynyth Paltrow. If they'd cast Selma Hayek to get naked, the movie would have been watchable.
Mike

Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Two Ravens" in Amazing Journeys Magazine #9 Sept. 05
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises

Swashbuckler
One-man sword-and-sorcery machine

Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 1227

Posted 5/1/2006 3:19 PM (GMT -4)

Mike: I'm generally in favor of Gwyneth or Selma being naked.

erazmus
Master

Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4474

Posted 5/1/2006 4:05 PM (GMT -4)

Possibly both, yes, _that_ would be excellent. You realize that Dickens is spinning in his grave right now? Counter-clockwise!
Mike

darkbow
Rabbit lord

Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1574

Posted 5/1/2006 4:26 PM (GMT -4)

Gwyneth and Selma naked in a movie? TOGETHER?
Yes, I would definitely label that "Great Expectations."

Frank
Adept

Date Joined Aug 2005
Total Posts : 628

Posted 5/1/2006 4:40 PM (GMT -4)

Now there's a potentially good idea for a horror novel: Jack the Ripper was actually Dickens 18 years after he became a Vampire. I'm imagining scenes in which he talks about the serial killer aspects of Great Expectations, and another scene in which he visits the home of his old publisher and scares him into laundering new royalties from book sales to live comfortably, and yet another scene in which Vampire Dickens laughs at Bram Stoker...maybe in our time he's still enjoying life in the public eye as Marilyn Manson...

Somebody call Anne Rice. Maybe we can steer her away from those Life of Christ novels and back to what she does best.

darkbow
Rabbit lord

Date Joined Oct 2005
Total Posts : 1574

Posted 5/1/2006 6:19 PM (GMT -4)

Marilyn Manson?
How about Clive Barker?

R David Skinner
Stablehand

Date Joined Apr 2006
Total Posts : 42

Posted 5/2/2006 1:17 PM (GMT -4)

I've met Clive. He's nothing like Manson - or Dickens.
The wine was rather stout that night! Somewhere in St. Louis for CapCon. What year was that? 1994? We got to view the pre-release original 'The Crow' I think at the Fox. It was a great weekend, but the cobwebs are wine-soaked and bleeding.
"One foot in the ecto-sphere - and if you've had the red wine tonight, you're there . . . "
What a great time twould be, twould be a great time to dine and wine with Clive and Charles the vampire Dickens!
I'd have to have absynthe - wouldn't trust a rouge drink.

R David Skinner

Independent Scholar, Philosopher, Reviewer

Bitternut
Stablehand

Date Joined May 2006
Total Posts : 45

Posted 5/10/2006 3:18 PM (GMT -4)

Ahhhhhh....DICKENS! What a fabulous descriptionist...

bitternut

(aka the sloth)

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