Okay, question: everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the story of A Christmas Carol. But how many people have actually read Charles Dickens's original novel? How many of you reading this can say that you've gone through the whole thing?
I did, toward the end of my first semester at Elon. While in the library one night looking for something else I came across it, and was surprised at how tiny it is as a novel: not very thick at all. I checked it out and spent the rest of the night reading it. Amazingly, there are things in the original book that to the best of my knowledge have yet to be depicted in any film adaptation.
Did you know that Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol pretty much out of desperation, because he had to publish something to pay off some bills? A Christmas Carol is probably the most classic example of the proverbial "potboiler" that's ever been written.
And for a final anecdote about A Christmas Carol, it might interest y'all to know that when I was 12 years old and in seventh grade, I played the role of Marley's Ghost in our middle school production of A Christmas Carol. Our first performance was one night for the parents and school board, and the following day it was two performances for the lower grades and then the rest of the middle school. The night and elementary performances went off great! But then for the middle school show I walked out in that ghastly makeup and teased-up hair (that the girls loved playing with for some reason) and all those chains... and everybody in the audience started laughing! And then, I started laughing along with them!! I was giggling so hard that I barely got through my lines at all! Who ever heard of Marley's Ghost laughing instead of moaning?? But it happened. Years later and I still chuckle at that :-)
Anyhoo, if you haven't seen it already, you might want to check the listings over the next few days and see if the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott is playing on AMC again. They're also running 1985's Santa Claus: The Movie quite a lot this week!
3 comments:
We watch the George C. Scott version every Dec. 23. It is a family tradition.
"how many people have actually read Charles Dickens's original novel?"
I hang my head in shame. :-) And I actually own a copy. Bought it years ago, but just havent gotten around to reading it yet.
Have you ever seen the Richard Williams animated version? Based on illustrations from a version of the novel, it's still one of the best versions I've ever seen, and does incredible justice to the book.
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