Bleak House

The best thing about having a rattle-trap of a car (in them thar days. I drive a sensible car now.) was the sound effects. Or rather, what the engine noise did to the music.

I'm not much of a one for pop music. Late baroque / classical gets my vote, with the occasional nod to Late Classical / Romantic types like Verdi. So I'm talking about music with a lot of layers. Complexities. Dimensions. Stuff it actually pays to listen to -I mean it doesn't really do as aural wallpaper.

So, cruisin' an' playin' my radio, it became apparent that the engine noise was masking certain musical frequencies, usually the highest ones, the ones that played the recognisable tune. And what I was left with were the lower lines. Not helpful if I was listening to a sonata of any sort, or, say, one of Bach's cello suites, but a symphony? Wow. My head could fill in the missing parts but all of a sudden I could hear the music from a totally unfamiliar angle - the bass lines, the harmonies, the musical sub-plots - and my admiration and reverence for Beethoven and Haydn and Mozart and Verdi exploded.

Same sort of thing is happening now. I finally started watching the recent BBC take on Bleak House. I put it off for ages because the novel is one of my favourite Dickenses and I didn't want a disappointment (and I have fond memories of the last one they did). But Wow again - the adaptation is excellent, it looks gorgeous, the acting is top notch AND it's doing that thing that my car engine did. It's changed my focus on the book, and made me see structures and characterisations that I hadn't seen before. I never expected to feel a flash of sympathetic understanding for Tulkinghorn, or to despise Richard Carstone quite so heartily, or to see the malice seeping from Skimpole so clearly.

And best of all, it makes me want to re-read the book NOW. Can't say fairer than that.