[Written the day after having been one of the performers to read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol to an audience of several hundred.]

[First, the reader surrenders to text; then the audience
surrenders to the reader’s surrender.

Being a ham helps: Dickens’ text is highly developed
melodrama, written when that form of expression
was probably at the height of its development.
Nowhere is Dickens’ involvement in his action more
evident than in his confession that he wept as he
wrote the death of Little Nell.]

Reading the first few words out to the darkened audience,
words lying on the inert white Continue reading →