David Copperfield

...It's a cation of David Copperfield, the tidy TV and mechanistic...

...Send to: Peacework, Peter E. Murphy AFSC, 2161 Mass Ave., Cambridge, MA 02140 Commonweal 2 2 April 7, 2000...

...Creakle), Maggie hundred-page, densely elo- Smith (as Aunt Betsey), and quent masterpiece into four Nicholas Lyndhurst (as the hours and still have time left smarmy Uriah Heep) also over for commentary by Rus- acing the balancing act of sell Baker...

...By this test, Dick--Howard Zinn, historian and author ison, a medium like "Masterpiece The- ens's characters have succeeded...

...Countless sto- modern life (the Internet, you might say, "I believe every progressive, thinking ries-more than any author could tap- has become our Curiosity Shop...

...Even if you don't pute that tic-ridden personalities like show the real person, too...

...demn its exaggerated characterizations...

...When we and lifting much of the dia- follow the mature David's logue straight from Dickens...

...When he know its factual basis, David Copperfield Copperfield's immortal Mr...

...htm that resists conditioning, what hope is there for those 10 monthly issues: S20 (including who back away from life Canada & Mexico...

...public parks...The thought of being you get from Dickens's novels with their Of course, 150 years after the publi`an Ainerian citizen' without being a radical, feels empty, lacking, hollow, surfeit of characters and details...

...couple of colorful but completely superborhoods, of the storefronts and In fact, the extravagant language, with fluous characters (for example, an "old street corners, of the community its verbal detours and hyperbolic images, lady with a hand-basket") who are never centers, union halls, picket lines, and reinforces that impression of abundance heard from again...

...M E D I repetitious traits like the "Something will turn up" tag line would have a hard Celia Wren time with my boss, who always whistles the same three-note trill when confronted with a problem, and, when he's DICKENS ON THE TUBE surmounted one, walks around rubbing Masterpiece Theatre's 'David Copperfield' his hands together so audibly you can hear him down the corridor...

...date What hope, when what blazes Card above us scorches the clarity of daylight Signature into the translucent thickness of ozone...

...swells up out of the clutter...

...Micawber- walks young David (Daniel Radcliffe) feels personal...

...Chemical Imbalance Another day on the wing for the depressed, where vivacious doctors watch you shuffle from one uneaten meal Monthly magazine from American to another, as they try to match Friends Service Committee, linking the elusive elements that will make you grassroots work with national and want to live...

...By compar- ing about-survival...

...S 10 studentllowincome...

...Reading a book like David es "David Copperfield's" first episode, "The key stories are nor chose of the Copperfield is a leisurely business...

...S 1 prisoner...

...as if it were a fire...

...Adapter Adrian Dickensian personality, it's Hodges and director Simon hard not to feel that the creCurtis have, in fact, telescoped ators of "David Copperfield" the book with considerable have given the ExxonMobil delicacy, preserving innumer- Corporation (sponsor of able small but telling details "Masterpiece Theatre") its (the cotton wool Aunt Betsey money's worth...

...that launchPEACEQW0R1( red tape...

...Stiffhearts a favorite child...

...fortunate female, is always Commonweal 2 1 April 7, 2000 before me, like a trussed fowl: skew- atre" seems streamlined-the Merchantered through and through with office- Ivory-picturesque montage (a country pens, and bound hand and foot with lane, a berry on a twig, etc...

...than like, well, "Masterpiece With actors like Sir Ian Theatre," that is hardly a sig- McKellen (as the vicious nificant criticism...

...Drifting, on the tide of the constantly debt-ridden but eternally san- through the debtors' prison, one solicinarrator's reminiscence, past miserable guine that "something will turn up"- tous arm draped around the boy's times and happy times, significance and have more than a little bit of artifice shoulder, you can see why some critics insignificance, mistakes and successes, about them...

...Dickens's London...

...530 international...

...early professional career, for Characters may have been example, we do not hear pruned, and episodes shuffled how, when he attends parliaor retouched for dramatic ef- mentary debates as a refect, but David Copperfield's porter, "Britannia, that unsoul is still there...

...What's missuses to stop up her ears dur- ing, of course, is Dickens's exing David's birth, for example) uberant language...

...And way to fault his writing has been to con- necked and seemingly top-heavy in his his name is David Copperfield...

...Its integrity is unshakable...

...curling gray sideburns, making frantic You can almost feel that favoritism "It has been the peculiarity and the mar- use of his eyebrows, Hoskins is in many when you read, or reread, the most au- vel of this man's power," Anthony Trol- ways a cartoon-when he topples over tobiographical of Dickens's novels, the lope complained, "that he has invested backward while pretending to slit his book into which he projected much of his puppets with a charm that has en- throat (a ploy to escape creditors), he his childhood trauma, including his mis- abled him to dispense with human na- might be back in Who Framed Roger Raberable days, at age twelve, pasting labels ture...

...resource listings, When the Times says even shyness is a trait www.afsc.org/peacew•rk...

...Ever does a creditable job plastering him into L 1869, "1 have in my heart of since Dickens's own lifetime, a classic public television's universe, too...

...But his face is expressive enough to in a blacking factory...

...caricatures, too...

...style that mirrors, in a way, the urban version may seem, to some people, a -Pat Farren, founding editor landscapes that form the backdrop for more soothing antidote to the frenzy of so much of his fiction...

...the city is a sort of adaptation is a reminder of George Or-Betty Burkes, President, Women's International League for Peace grand-scale version of the oddity-packed well's remark, in an essay analyzing and Freedom-USA pawnshops the author likes to describe, Dickens's characters: "There are no rules most notably, of course, in The Old Cu- in novel writing, and for any work of "A vital link for widely scattered groups riosity Shop, whose narrative actually art there is only one test worth botherof activists...

...Check[] credit cardO ex...

...Focus on social, economic, and racial justice...

...There is a history in the genes Detailed progressive calendar and that ignores all love...

...But that's the point, of see Micawber as a buffoonish incarnayou become increasingly convinced that course, and besides, real people can be tion of Dickens's real father-an imyou're involved in a real life...

...international perspectives...

...Critics who object to prudent man whose untrustworthiness If the new "Masterpiece may also have found its way Theatre" adaptation of David into the character of the vilCopperfield (airing April 16 and lainous Murdstone (Trevor 17) feels somewhat less like life Eve in the PBS series...

...And certainly no one would dis- bit...

...you for example, seems almost absurdly tidy war room, the boardrooms, or the have to exult in the verbal conceits as when compared to the book's thickly newsrooms, but those of the you meet them, and you meet a profu- written first pages, in which we meet a livingrooms, kitchens, and neigh- sion of them...

...How, after though doddering headmasall, do you condense a nine- ter Mr...

...Make check to AFSC/ Peacework...

...Name The superfluous molecule chokes Address the air we must breathe to live...

...In any person in this country needs the are washing around in a metropolis like case, "Masterpiece Theatre's" handsome support of Peacework in their lives...

...In any case, Micawber is a fixture of ike many "fond parents," The personalities, too, hit the right the literary empyrean, and Bob Hoskins Charles Dickens wrote in blend of realism and the grotesque...