Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, is a humorous account by
Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between
Kingston and Oxford. The book was initially intended to be a
serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the
route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the
serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the
comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a
Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers - the jokes seem
fresh and witty even today. The three men are based on Jerome
himself (the narrator J.) and two real-life friends, George
Wingrave (who went on to become a senior manager in Barclays Bank)
and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business,
called Harris in the book), with whom he often took boating trips.
The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional but, "as Jerome admits,
developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all
Englishmen, contains an element of the dog." The trip is a typical
boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. This was
just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died
out, replaced by the 1880s craze for boating as a leisure activity.
As with Three Men in a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel seems
thoroughly modern in tone and style of humor. Jerome K. Jerome is
particularly fond of comical exaggeration of the sort that would
seem totally natural on a television sitcom today. After a mistake
involving somebody else's bicycle, and a run-in with the
authorities, he summarizes "My going scot free is regarded in
police circles there to this day as a grave miscarriage of
justice." Portions read much like Douglas Adams ("I wish no one to
read this book under a misapprehension. There will be no useful
information in this book.") and others like John Cleese in Fawlty
Towers (a discussion of an English shopkeeper frustrated when the
protagonists, as a prank, pretend not to be able to speak English).
The material near the start of the book about the friends and their
wives is all quite funny, and thoroughly modern in the way the
women effortlessly outsmart the men. The discussions of
stereotypical German behavior are remarkable mostly for how little
such stereotypes have changed. Germans were, 120 years ago and
today, thought to be officious and compulsive in following rules.
Fans of old bicycle books will find much here to like, with
description of the hazards of amateur bike-tuning, and lies in bike
advertisements, and the observation that uphills always seem to
last longer than downhills.
General
Imprint: |
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
2014 |
First published: |
2014 |
Authors: |
Jerome K Jerome
|
Dimensions: |
254 x 178 x 13mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
246 |
ISBN-13: |
978-1-4953-5957-6 |
Categories: |
Books >
Sport & Leisure >
Humour >
General
|
LSN: |
1-4953-5957-3 |
Barcode: |
9781495359576 |
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