Which turned out to be a bit of false-advertising--what Barns & Noble actually had on display was a facsimile of the 1922 facsimile of the 1843. It wasn't till I was home that I realized the subterfuge. Very clever, Barnes & Noble! I should've known that $12.95 was too good to be true.
But whatever minor feelings of being ripped off I might have harbored were quickly dispelled by 1) the fact that it really is a handsome little volume, 2) the delightful text is the same no matter what year it's reproducing, and 3) it contains a most excellent introduction written by G.K. Chesterton, celebrated frenemy of no less than George Bernard Shaw himself, such that I now actually prefer the 1922 facsimile!
What is so refreshing about Chesterton is that he eschews the standard sentimentalist "what a treat to have this holiday classic for new generations to cherish!" type intro that plagues us like a Hallmark ad to this day. No, Chesterton has far bigger fish to fry--for given how he was writing in 1922, with all those sundry Eugenicists, social Darwinists, Nietzscheans, and nascent-fascists making the rounds and laying the groundwork for WWII and the Holocaust, Chesterton finds nothing quaint or classic about A Christmas Carol at all. On the contrary, he finds its message more urgent than ever, and it's worth interrogating whether we can still say the same today.
For after spending the first couple pages repeating the party-line of how Dickens "saved Christmas" before it was too late, Chesterton makes clear his real target: "Scrooge is a utilitarian and an individualist; that is, he is a miser in theory as well as in practice. He utters all the sophistries by which the age of machinery has tried to turn the virtue of charity into a vice...Many amiable sociologists will say, as he said, 'Let them die and decrease the surplus population'...
"It is notable also that Dickens gives the right reply...The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him whether he is the surplus population...That is the answer which the Spirit of Christmas gives to Scrooge...Scrooge is exactly the sort of man who would really talk of the superfluous poor as of something dim and distant; and yet he is also exactly the sort of man whom others might regard as sufficiently dim, not to say dingy, to be himself superfluous...the miser who himself looks so like a pauper, confidently ordering the massacre of paupers. This is true enough even to more modern life; and we have all met mental defectives in the comfortable classes who are humoured, as with a kind of hobby, by being allowed to go about lecturing on the mental deficiency of poor people. We have all met professors, of stunted figure and the most startling ugliness, who explain that all save the strong and beautiful should be painlessly extinguished in the interests of the race. We have all seen the most sedentary scholars proving on paper that none should survive save the victors of aggressive war and physical struggle of life; we have all heard the idle rich explaining why the idle poor deserve to be left to die of hunger. In all the spirit of Scrooge survives".
Tell me: do we still have the ugly rhapsodizing the beautiful? (I seem to recall the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch doing just that recently). Do we still have the wealthy showing off how poor they can dress? (I'm looking at you Mark Zuckerberg). Do we still have the flabby, obese, and sedentary preaching the virtue of strength and aggression? (Such is the stereotype of your average NFL fan--or of your overweight talk-show hosts demanding shows of military strength). And most of all, do we still have the idle rich lecturing the idle poor--all while their mouths are full of produce picked by migrants working 98 cents an hour, their clothing sewn by sweatshop children, their Holiday chocolate harvested from African plantations, their diamonds collected through blood and horror? My my my, how the spirit of Scrooge not only survives but thrives into the 21st century. But Chesterton ain't through with us yet, and saves his most biting commentary for last:
"But in justice to Scrooge, we must admit that in some respects the later developments of his heathen philosophy have gone beyond him. If Scrooge was an individualists, he had something of the good as well as the evil of individualism. He believed at least in the negative liberty of the Utilitarians. He was ready to live and let live, even if the standard of living was very near to that of dying and letting die. He partook of gruel while his nephew partook of punch; but it never occurred to him that he should forcible forbid a grown man like his nephew to consume punch, or coerce him into eating gruel. In that he was far behind the ferocity and tyranny of the social reformers of our own day. If he refused to subscribe to a scheme for giving people Christmas dinners, at least he did not subscribe (as the reformers do) to a scheme for taking away the Christmas dinners they have already got...Doubtless he would have regarded charity as folly, but he would also have regarded the forcible reversal as theft. He would not have thought it natural to pursue Bob Cratchit to his own home, to spy on him, to steal his turkey, to run away with his punch-bowl, to kidnap his crippled child, and put him in prison as a defective...These antics were far beyond the activities of poor Scrooge, whose figure shines by comparison with something of humour and humanity."
Ouch.
Perhaps, upon further reflection, it is a mistake to purchase facsimile reproductions of A Christmas Carol, for that implies that this is an artifact from some other time, with concerns irrelevant to our own--if anything, the things that worried Dickens are even more cutting-edge now.
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