Fred's Book Club: Novel Ideas.

Welcome to another installment of the Humpback Writers, the book club named for Hump Day. What should I call it, Wednesday Writers? BOOORIIIING.

Today we're taking a look at one of my favorite authors, an often comic writer whose humor, unlike so many, has stood the test of time. I would never have expected this to be the book I chose for a profile of his, not being one of his more famous -- but you'll see why shortly.

Jerome K. Jerome, British author of the timeless classic Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) and its sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, was a wonderful wordsmith and a man of broad interests and talents. His books, like the famous Three Men in a Boat, are packed with hilarious digressions -- I would guess that a little more than half of that novel are stories of what actually happens to our hero and his two friends (and the dog) on their boating trip on the Thames, the rest being meanders into other vignettes, observations, and essays.

In Novel Notes, the same plan maintains. Our narrator and hero explains to his wife his brilliant idea:

When, on returning home one evening, after a pipe party at my friend Jephson’s, I informed my wife that I was going to write a novel, she expressed herself as pleased with the idea. She said she had often wondered I had never thought of doing so before.  “Look,” she added, “how silly all the novels are nowadays; I’m sure you could write one.” (Ethelbertha intended to be complimentary, I am convinced; but there is a looseness about her mode of expression which, at times, renders her meaning obscure.)
      When, however, I told her that my friend Jephson was going to collaborate with me, she remarked, “Oh,” in a doubtful tone; and when I further went on to explain to her that Selkirk Brown and Derrick MacShaughnassy were also going to assist, she replied, “Oh,” in a tone which contained no trace of doubtfulness whatever, and from which it was clear that her interest in the matter, as a practical scheme, had entirely evaporated.
      I fancy that the fact of my three collaborators being all bachelors diminished somewhat our chances of success, in Ethelbertha’s mind. Against bachelors, as a class, she entertains a strong prejudice. A man’s not having sense enough to want to marry, or, having that, not having wit enough to do it, argues to her thinking either weakness of intellect or natural depravity, the former rendering its victim unable, and the latter unfit, ever to become a really useful novelist.

And yet off he goes on his plan, sitting around with his three buddies to try to plot out their novel, for which they have no fully-baked ideas. It becomes a disaster at every step. But it leads to wonderful storytelling and cultural observations, and lots of fun.

What put me in mind of this book was our current obsession with the coronavirus outbreak. The various media technology around today might have surprised Jerome, who died in 1927, but the news hysteria would have been extremely familiar to him. In Chapter VIII of Novel Notes, he relates this story, and I hope you'll pardon the long excerpt:

MacShaughnassy puffed a mouthful of smoke over a spider which was just about to kill a fly. This caused the spider to fall into the river, from where a supper-hunting swallow quickly rescued him.
      “You remind me,” he said, “of a scene I once witnessed in the office of The Daily—well, in the office of a certain daily newspaper. It was the dead season, and things were somewhat slow. An endeavour had been made to launch a discussion on the question ‘Are Babies a Blessing?’ The youngest reporter on the staff, writing over the simple but touching signature of ‘Mother of Six,’ had led off with a scathing, though somewhat irrelevant, attack upon husbands, as a class; the Sporting Editor, signing himself ‘Working Man,’ and garnishing his contribution with painfully elaborated orthographical lapses, arranged to give an air of verisimilitude to the correspondence, while, at the same time, not to offend the susceptibilities of the democracy (from whom the paper derived its chief support), had replied, vindicating the British father, and giving what purported to be stirring midnight experiences of his own. The Gallery Man, calling himself, with a burst of imagination, ‘Gentleman and Christian,’ wrote indignantly that he considered the agitation of the subject to be both impious and indelicate, and added he was surprised that a paper holding the exalted, and deservedly popular, position of The— should have opened its columns to the brainless vapourings of ‘Mother of Six’ and ‘Working Man.’
     “The topic had, however, fallen flat. With the exception of one man who had invented a new feeding-bottle, and thought he was going to advertise it for nothing, the outside public did not respond, and over the editorial department gloom had settled down.
     “One evening, as two or three of us were mooning about the stairs, praying secretly for a war or a famine, Todhunter, the town reporter, rushed past us with a cheer, and burst into the Sub-editor’s room. We followed. He was waving his notebook above his head, and clamouring, after the manner of people in French exercises, for pens, ink, and paper.
     “‘What’s up?’ cried the Sub-editor, catching his enthusiasm; ‘influenza again?’
     “‘Better than that!’ shouted Todhunter. ‘Excursion steamer run down, a hundred and twenty-five lives lost—four good columns of heartrending scenes.’
     “‘By Jove!’ said the Sub, ‘couldn’t have happened at a better time either’—and then he sat down and dashed off a leaderette, in which he dwelt upon the pain and regret the paper felt at having to announce the disaster, and drew attention to the exceptionally harrowing account provided by the energy and talent of ‘our special reporter.’”

Naturally, we might wish books like this one, written in 1893 and across an ocean, had a glossary. Like:

pipe party: a social gathering of men doing manly tobacco-involved things
sub-editor: British name for a copy editor
leaderette: British term for a short editorial in the same typeface as the main article

But one thing that never changes is the crazed glee of a reporter with a story of horror and misery to excite the public's attention. Nor with the media's delight in ginning up public controversy. As with so many other subjects, Jerome K. Jerome (the writer so nice, they named him twice) has a light satirical touch that makes you recognize the type and laugh at it, or even with it, although it really is a Bad Thing.

Jerome could write very serious stuff too, sometimes bordering on the maudlin, but he was at his best with this kind of writing. I'd recommend Novel Notes or pretty much anything the man ever wrote. Probably best to start with Three Men in a Boat. I can't, however, vouch for the 1975 Michael Palin adaptation. I haven't seen it, but a book with so many odd narrative digressions would seem to me to be unfilmable.

Novel Notes was once a hard book to find in the United States, to our shame; my copy above was by Alan Sutton Publishing in the UK, and was perhaps one of my first Amazon purchases. Nowadays, however, it's available for free, thanks to the tireless volunteers at Gutenberg.org (hi, Mongo!). Get your Brit on and give it a go.