# Charles Dickens made me weep in my car today **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 14, 2007, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532 "2007-08-14T05:50:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TroubleAgain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@TroubleAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroubleAgain)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/21 "2007-08-15T19:22:14Z")
I cry at the drop of a hat. It’s not even sporting to try to make me cry with a book or movie. Like shooting fish in a barrel, or birds on a baited field. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/22 "2007-08-15T19:23:26Z")
[QUOTE=Ready\_for\_my\_closeup] The novel, [Requiem for a Woman’s Soul](http://www.amazon.com/Requiem-Womans-Soul-King-Penguin/dp/0140097732) , is definitely the book that’s affected me the most. [/QUOTE] Oh my, I hadn’t even thought about “weeping” in the sense of horror at the real world (only in the tragic, dramatic sense). In that case I also include works such as **Art Spiegelman** ’s [Maus](http://tinyurl.com/yrdh8k), and reading a “comic book” as a child at the house of some friends of my parents, [San Mao](http://tinyurl.com/2q49zr) the orphaned boy, which depicted some truly bleak scenes of wartime and colonial indignities in 1940s China. (Which was my first reading of a “comic” that was not humorous in nature… Kind of a shock, but very eye-opening.) ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/23 "2007-08-15T19:35:45Z")
[QUOTE=Randy Seltzer] Yes, I – a big strong man who can bench press over ten billion pounds and then a horse rare – was crying like a little schoolgirl. Alone. In my car. In Western Kansas. Anyone have any similar experiences with TTC? With Dickens? With books-on-tape? With the Sunflower State? [/QUOTE] I must admit that if I were in western Kansas, I’d cry too. ---
**Author:** ![Ellen\_Cherry](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellen_cherry/32/3600_2.png) [@Ellen\_Cherry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellen_Cherry)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/24 "2007-08-15T20:32:40Z")
I admit it: this mama can’t make it through Love You Forever without tearing up, either – although the illustrations are really pretty bad. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/25 "2007-08-15T22:55:36Z")
I’m on a nonstop Dickens kick right now. Just finished\* Little Dorrit \*and _Our Mutual Friend_–what a dark masterpiece that was!–just started _Bleak House_. _Domby and Sons_ is next. The more I read the more amazed at what an all-around brilliant writer he was. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/26 "2007-08-16T12:21:32Z")
I was mostly unmoved by **Deathly Hallows**. When I got to Dobby’s funeral, such as it was – sorry, I did not find Luna’s eulogy as eloquent as Harry did I did not cry, but I did wonder what I would have said under such circumstances. Didn’t take more than a few seconds before I remembered: > [@](#): > > Originally posted by **J.R.R. Tolkien** > “Stop!” said Thorin. “There is more good in you than you know, child of the kindly West. If more valued food and cheer and song over hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But, sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!” And then the waterworks started. ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/27 "2007-08-16T18:13:17Z")
> [@](#): > > So somewhere in eastern Colorado, I get to the last chapter, where Carton\* takes Darnay’s place at the Guillotine, and I start to get ferklempt. In the last couple of paragraphs, (you know: “it is a far far better thing…”) I get the trembly lip thing and my vision gets a little blurry. That’s a pretty understandable moment to weep your eyes out. But one thing you don’t mention is the identity of the person reading on the audiobook. The performance must’ve been effective – I wonder if a lousy reader would have left you dry-eyed. Who was it, do you remember? (I can imagine Alan Rickman or Hugh Laurie kicking _ass_ in a reading of this particular book. Both can show dry wit, repressed emotions, or raw vulnerability depending on the circumstances.) ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/28 "2007-08-16T20:45:18Z")
I admit the ending of the movie, “The Joy Luck Club” made me cry. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/29 "2007-08-16T22:44:31Z")
[QUOTE=Rilchiam] And then the waterworks started. [/QUOTE] I seem to have an involuntary campaign to scar my son emotionally: he cried at Thorin’s death, and again at Charlotte’s. I have to admit, I had a catch in my throat when I read that paragraph aloud: “She never moved again. Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of all the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.” That is some damn fine writing. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2007, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/30 "2007-08-17T02:50:49Z")
[QUOTE=Ellen Cherry] I admit it: this mama can’t make it through Love You Forever without tearing up, either – although the illustrations are really pretty bad. [/QUOTE] I’m so glad to read this. I used to read it to the kids and at some point in just the last few years I was visiting someone with a small child. Instant wet eyes. The book that makes me cry every single time? Passages in “My Name Is Asher Lev”, by Chaim Potok. It resonates to the point of tears. Cartooniverse ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2007, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532/31 "2007-08-17T03:43:12Z")
[QUOTE=choie] That’s a pretty understandable moment to weep your eyes out. But one thing you don’t mention is the identity of the person reading on the audiobook. The performance must’ve been effective – I wonder if a lousy reader would have left you dry-eyed. Who was it, do you remember? (I can imagine Alan Rickman or Hugh Laurie kicking _ass_ in a reading of this particular book. Both can show dry wit, repressed emotions, or raw vulnerability depending on the circumstances.) [/QUOTE] I’ve already taken in back to the library, so I can’t be sure. I think it might be Ian Richardson. But really, with this story, anyone could do it and make you cry. If they had Gilbert Godfrey alternating chapters with Fran Dreischer, I bet I still woulda gotten weepy at the end. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charles-dickens-made-me-weep-in-my-car-today/415532.md?page=1)