As a hardened Internet veteran, there isn’t much out there that surprises me. But this is something truly unique, whip-smart, and brilliantly executed: a pair of writers at Hooded Utilitarian wrote an epic literary criticism about “The Wire,” reimagining the lauded HBO show as a series of fiction pamphlets written in the 1840s by a contemporary of Charles Dickens named “Horatio Ogden.” It truly is remarkable:
The genius of The Wire lies in its sheer size and scope, its slow layering of complexity which could not have been achieved in any other way but the serial format. Dickens is often praised for his portrayal not merely of a set of characters and their lives, but of the setting as a character: the city itself an antagonist. Yet in The Wire, Bodymore is a far more intricate and compelling character than London in Dickens’ hands; The Wire portrays society to such a degree of realism and intricacy that A Tale of Two Cities—or any other story—can hardly compare.
That barely scratches the surface of an immense examination: how “The Wire’s” characters were more fully developed than Dickens’s, why Omar Little was a Brontë hero, and “The Wire’s” gothic influence in Victorian literature. But perhaps most impressive is the recreation of the famous “f*ck” scene in 19th century prose:
Full-size images here and here, original “Wire” scene below. Go read the whole thing; Hooded Utilitarian wins the Internet this week.
