Monsters

Spent a fair amount of the day considering what exactly it is that Dostoevsky and Dickens share in common, having made the comparison the other day. Obviously a concern with the world of the underdog, occasionally in ways that are disturbingly subversive, despite the apparent conservatism of both writers. (I use the term 'conservatism' here not so much in a political as in a social sense.)
 
Less obviously, but more tellingly, an ability to see people, and render them on paper, as what they really are. Monsters.

This accounts for the feeling that both writers engender that somehow we are not dealing with realistic fiction in the usual sense despite our recognition of how uncannily real it all is - a kind of hyper-reality.

This came home to me very powerfully today in three conversations I had, quite disconnected from each other, each one concerning quite different people, in which I immediately recognised accounts of behaviour that would not be out of place in The Idiot or Little Dorrit. So often we normalise, as it were, the behaviour of those we come into contact with, or even ourselves, to make it all seem reasonably sane but Dostoevsky and Dickens are there to remind us that it isn't (and that we aren't.)

And isn't it striking how obsessive both writers were about the idea of murder? FD seems to find a way to bring accounts of real life murders into The Idiot at regular intervals despite them having nothing to do with the plot in any direct way. Spooky.