During this period of pandemic I decided to read The Pickwick Papers as an attempt to move away from the partisan period in which we are living through. Even in fictional works that are more than 200 years old there pops up the belief in the blind biased-emotional allegiance to particular party party.

When I decided to read The Pickwick Papers I was hoping to jump away from the “normal” noise and nonsense of today’s erroneous news claims and read some classic fiction.  As I drifted back into what I thought might be simpler times of late 1830s England, I found yesterday’s fiction is not so different from today’s fact. It becomes a question of which comes first: the fact or the fiction. 

It seems that whatever comes up today is immediately framed by some zealot or zealots. Take support for the covid stimulus package before the Congress. It is not surprising to see it passed strictly on party lines. The partisan divide is something that is now the normal way of getting things done. It is the old  saying: if it don’t fit, force it.   Actually, when it comes to just about anything we seem to thrive on divided government and hence being a bifurcated state.  A Balkanization of the New World.

When you think about it we come by it naturally.  Our country started out as 13 individual colonies and then 13 individual states.  From there we quickly developed into sections: the North, South and West. Now we are like a Dr. Seuss book: One State, Deep State, Red State, Blue State (the Texas State has a little star).

In all of this I had to laugh when I saw The Hill headline on the Apple news feed stating Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson  forces reading of 628-page Senate coronavirus relief bill on floor. According to the story Johnson is going to inflict almost 20 hours of extracurricular reading on the Senate’s clerks. You may say this is more misery than humorous.  Odd maybe, since rarely does any bill get read on the Senate floor. What makes it funny or at least coincidental to me, is The Pickwick Papers is a book more than 600 pages, too. According to readinglength.com it would take the average reader 18 hours and 41 minutes  at 250 WPM (words per minute) to finish. So my suggestions to the Senate clerks is start reading.

Before I go further I must say I am not Dickensian scholar any more than I am a Senate antiquarian.  I am more of a Holiday Express man of letters.  In High School I remember our class reading Great Expectations.  We all got a kick out of Pip. I did read A Tale of Two Cities.  Today it would be The Tale of Two Senates. When my daughter was young she loved the musical Oliver!  I cannot count how many times I have seen that on VHS, yes VHS. And of course, we are all familiar with the classic  Christmas Carol.

It is not my intention to rehash The Pickwick Papers or any legislation before the Senate. However, CliffsNotes describes Mr. Pickwick and his fellow travelers as “a silly old fool surrounded by worshipful admirers.”  Sounds somewhat familiar and maybe even senatorial. 

But then that could be a description of just about any group of men, the Senate, men going on any sort of expedition, or a seditious mob on a quest to  save democracy as they conceive it from the hands of pediphiles. 

What particularly grabbed my attention to rhyming history was the chapter in which the traveling band of  Pickwickians show up in the small English borough of Eatanswill during an election. (Eat-an-swill I am sure Dickens had something in mind with that.) It appears like many communities in contemporary America “that the Eatanswill people, like the people of many other small towns consider themselves of the utmost and most mighty importance…” and are “bound to unite, heart and soul with one of the two great parties that divided the town–the Blues and the Buffs.” Today we see it in different colors.

Charles Dickens was at one time a law clerk and political reporter covering Parliament. He was an acute observer of social status and the economic impacts it had on English society.  Dickens wrote of the fictional political situation in Eatanswill in partisan terms. “Now the Blues lost no opportunity of opposing the Buffs and the Buffs lost no opportunity of opposing the Blues; consequence was, that whenever the Buffs and the Blues met together at a public meeting, town-hall, fair or market disputes and high words arose between them.” Like today, the issues didn’t matter as much as the opposition to them. 

Dickens continue to describes the  town where shops and inns were divided. Even the church itself was divided: “there was Blue aisle and a Buff aisle in the very church itself.”

And it goes without saying both sides had their own newspapers:the Gazette and the Independent. Dickens described those papers as: “Fine newspapers” with  “Such leading articles and such spirited attacks!” The Gazette paper was “worthless” the Independent was a “disgraceful and dastardly journal.” Dickens writes that both papers printed “false and scurrilous stories”and “other spirit-stirring denunciations, were strewn plentifully over the columns of each, in every number, and excited feelings of the most intense delight and indignation in the bosoms of the townspeople.” It sounds like Dickens is describing  weekday morning  TV “news” shows with Fox and Friends and Morning Joe. 

The papers, like today, questioned the character, motives and disposition of the townspeople demanding to know to know, “whether the constituency of Eatanswill were grand fellows they had always taken them for, or base and servile tools, undeserving alike of the name Englishmen and the blessing of freedom,” or just plain deplorable.  

When Mr. Pickwick  asked a local about the election taking place as a “spirited contest,” the local  informed him about how prospective voters are getting drunk and holed up in a local inn. “They keep ’em locked up there till they want ’em.  The effect of that is, you see it prevent our getting at them; and even if we could it would be of no use, for they keep them very drunk on purpose.” I guess claims of voter fraud and suppression were fictionally practiced way back then, too. It gives old historical meaning to the adage that says “if you ain’t cheating you ain’t winning.”

The Pickwick Papers was a good pandemic read.  It seems the more fiction you read the more you have to wonder where the facts end and the stories take over.