A Small Cigar, A Men's Club, and A Rotund Hero

The Grief of Finishing Dicken's The Pickwick Papers

I am grieving the loss. I saved the last chapter, sadly entitled “The Pickwick Club Finally Dissolved,” because I didn’t want the story to be over. Now that I have finished it my tears are bittersweet because the book ends with the same tone that makes it so wonderfully therapeutic: joyful realism that does not take itself too seriously.

“It is the fate…