When did you read Ulysses that you hadn’t read Dickens? I know that the “I got paid by the word and you can tell” prose isn’t for everyone but isn’t Joyce one of the most notoriously impenetrable writers in the English language? Seems like in most cases there would be an opposite progression, unless you’re one of those people.
So cards on the table here, I’ve never actually read Oliver Twist. But even neo-google is able to point me at enough useful details to get enough of a gist to follow it.
And that’s assuming you don’t pick it up from Wishbone, the animated talking dogs version , or the muppets parody that I’m sure exists somewhere.
First and foremost, the dunce is incapable of valuing knowledge that they don’t personally understand or agree with. If they don’t know something, then that thing clearly isn’t worth knowing.
There is a corollary to this that I’ve seen as well, and it dovetails with the way so many of these guys get obsessed with IQ. Anything they can’t immediately understand must be nonsense not worth knowing. Anything they can understand (or think they understand) that you don’t is clearly an arcane secret of the universe that they can only grasp because of their innate superiority. I think that this is the combination that explains how so many of these dunces believe themselves to be the ubermensch who must exercise authoritarian power over the rest of us for the good of everyone.
See also the commenter(s) on this thread who insist that their lack of reading comprehension is evidence that they’re clearly correct and are in no way part of the problem.
Try telling it to pretend to be Nancy Pelosi and see if that helps make it more consistent.