David Copperfield Cures Winter Blues

Winter in Chicago. The phrase seems almost redundant so complete is the cold seasons' obliteration of every memory of warmer times.

It has its upside of course. Snow at Soldier Field is always welcome. Ice-skating in front of the Bean at Millennium Park is a most idyllic pleasure. But slogging through the long post-holiday season in this mid western metropolis requires a great deal of composure and more than a modicum of self-preserving strategies.

Even in this era of global warming it is still infinitely unpleasant to be in the open air, and more often than not the rising temps mean a messy cold rain instead of a pristine snow, made altogether less pleasant by the disconcerting suspicion that indeed the end is nigh.

The daily grind on germ-infested buses -- the winds of the croup the only refreshment of the stagnant air, gloves dropped from laps onto filthy salt mud floors, ankles drenched in slushy puddles of indiscernible depth -- even the expectation of renewed vigor from an afternoon walk in the slim hours of sunshine leaves one achy and tired as if the sun required the blood from one's own veins to light its lamp.

Ah! To be back home again. Vaporizer steaming! Radiator humming! Tea steeping! But these charms of the homestead quickly wear off with the outdoor chill. Alas, one is unwilling to go out and unhappy to stay in.

The cats are mad and run like maniacs across the furniture with wild eyes and barred teeth. One wonders if there might not be some genuine satisfaction in clawing rattan.

For this ailment - commonly known as "Cabin Fever" -- I can suggest but one foolproof remedy: a good fiction!

I took up Dickens' David Copperfield the other day and cannot impart how close little Mr. Copperfield and I have become in so few hours. Yes.

The mid-winter novel is a true friend in trying times. Winter is conducive to the transportation of the imagination to far off worlds. Winter is not the time for a Harlequin Romance or Contemporary Nihilism. Winter is the time for the 19th century novel! A time for The Brothers Karamazov or Moby Dick, Anna Karenina or Jane Eyre. The shortness of the days are the perfect compliment to the longness of the sentences.

The smallest apartment can house the entire cast of characters from Dickens' London or Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg. There is no better way to expand the walls of Winter's oppression than by reading James or Hardy, Austen or Bronte. Sometimes the best way to pass the time is to go back in time. Read a great 19th century novel during the cold, dark days of Winter and before you know it, it'll be baseball and box scores once again.

Source: http://mgspandg.blogspot.com/2007/01/david-copperfield-cures-winter-blues_26.html