Which novel written in the Victorian era described the Circumlocution Office to satirize the way petty government document-jockeying ties things up and delays reasonable requests?
A) Middlemarch by George Eliot
B) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
C) Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
D) Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
It's at least a half-million dollar question for sure. And the answer is: Appearing on your local PBS station for the next few Sunday nights is a fabulous production of Dickens' "Little Dorrit," my favorite of all his books. We haven't seen the red tape that ties everything together yet, but last night we saw a terrific, twisting evocation of the Circumlocution Office that houses it when hero Arthur Clenham went to look for the documents that would show why William Dorrit ended up in the Marshalsea debtors' prison. If you're a passionate reader, that's the kind of detail you've picked up over the years that just might win you some money. (Btw, all four of these books make for great reading...)
I'd originally thought Dickens originated the phrase "red tape" in this novel, but the Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins doesn't confirm that, and says Thomas Carlyle used "red tapism" as a metaphor for bureaucracy.
If you're studying for a quiz show, you can get info. like this in two ways: A lifetime of wide and greedy reading, or a good one-volume literary encyclopedia. Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia is a nice one (it mentions the Circumlocution Office in the entry on Little Dorrit). There's also a specific Benet's for American literature.
Most quiz show literature questions can be answered simply by knowing authors, titles, major characters and basic plot lines, which Benet's will give you if you're in a hurry. It's also good to know first lines and famous lines from major works, like these:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." and "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done..." ... The first are the opening lines of Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities," and the second are from the final monologue by his character Sidney Carton as he goes to his death by guillotine in the same novel.
"All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way..." are the opening lines of Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina."
There is (Voila! There's a book for everything!) a handy little book called "The Algonquin Literary Quiz Book" by Louis Decimus Rubin that will give you lots of this sort of thing. It looks like a special order on Amazon.com, but your public library may have it.
Hi Lynn,
ReplyDeleteJay here (you were my expert on Millionaire) and I'm enjoying your blog. Thanks for doing this.
I did want to comment on your last line in 'A Tale of Two Cities' - because it is one of my favorite trivia/misinformation questions - mainly because it is such a well known line and is almost universally assumed that Sydney Carton says it.
Actually, Sydney Carton doesn't say anything prior to being executed. The line just before the final monologue reads:
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe- a woman- had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
And then comes the section that includes the 'far, far better' quote. So Sydney never said it - it is what he might have said if he chosen to speak.
So, it is correct to say that the line you quoted is the last line of the novel but it is incorrect to say that it was the last thing said by Sydney.
Keep up the good work!
---Jay