2013 Book Review #29: Three Men in a Boat

[jethrien]

Title: Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog)
Author: Jerome K. Jerome
Genre: Humorous travelogue (historic)
Thingummies: 3

Synopsis: Three friends at the end of the 19th century take an inept boating holiday up the Thames.

Thoughts: In a very British vein of humor rather similar to Wodehouse's style, Jerome recounts what sounds like a rather unpleasant vacation. In the best passages, such as a hilarious description of the trials of multiple people trying to pack together, the text crackles with wit even as you breathe a sigh of relief that this all-to-familiar scene is not currently happening to you. However, the best humor relies on understatement. I personally found Jerome to be far too repetitive. He never uses one anecdote on a particular topic when five could be produced, even if they all have essentially the same punchline. There are also occasional flights of purple prose, waxing rhapsodic on the beauty of a river at night or some such, that serve less to express novel sentiments as to just ruin the tone.

It's a cute little piece, and genuinely funny, but really could have used an editor. Of course, it was written to different taste than modern readers', but there are plenty of his contemporaries with work that managed to stay a bit more disciplined.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

It might help in understanding the unevenness to know that this started as a guidebook to the Thames--these were really popular at the time--and got overrun by the anecdotes about the friends. Hence the long imagining of the signing of the Magna Carta. What amused me about those was the assumption that he doesn't have to explain who the Duke of Wallingford is--cause of course you'd know. Ah, British public school education.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, did he wander afield.