Three Men in a Boat and To Say Nothing of the Dog - August CC Book Club Selection

[Mary13]

@Caraid

I am putting myself into the book club dog house.

Henceforth, we shall refer to you only as Montmorency.

[jerseysouthmomchess]

^@caraid ( now known As Montie) I mentioned earlier that I abandoned TMItB fairly early, way before the creepy chapter 16. I’m thankful for this discussion for making me appreciate the importance of this iconic story,
But, it wasn’t as @ignatius, described some of her books, “not my cuppa tea” …

But, I hope you are able to read To Say Nothing Of the Dog, so much more enjoyable and the tie ins to previous selections is spot on, and fun, like “Easter eggs” as @mathmom mentioned.

Re: To Say Nothing of the Dog, here is a delightful interview with witty and glib Connie Willis. I particularly enjoyed her comments about including her dog, Gracie in any novels. She is a hoot!

https://www.hourwolf.com/chats/willis.html

CW: I have one great human daughter and three very obnoxious non-human ones. Gracie the bulldog tore her crucet ligament by jumping straight up in the air and has to have surgery tomorrow. Molly and Hildy the cats (from HIS GIRL FRIDAY) are sweet but evil and spend all their time pestering the dog. I don’t know where I went wrong. Cordelia turned out so well. She’s currently at George Washington University, getting a master’s in forensic science and will shortly graduate and solve the Ramsey case, since no one else seems to be doing it.

Oh, by the way, I’m the mother of a TV celeb. My daughter Cordelia (well, they called her Cornelia, but, oh, well) was on BURDEN OF PROOF today. She was one of those people who sit in the second row and don’t get to say anything, but there were some great shots of her shoulder and her neck while the camera was on the people in the front row. I love BURDEN OF PROOF because I am hopelessly addicted (still) to O.J. and to the Ramsey case and to the au pair case, etc. Also Greta van Susteren has very long hair and a very wide mouth and my daughter actually discussed statistics with her and I know what grade she got. Greta, not Cordelia. Cord always gets A’s.

JF: Perhaps you could get your bulldog cast in something… (And yes, let’s hear it for Ed Bryant!)

CW: Gracie should be cast in something, possibly cement. She is the naughtiest bulldog we’ve ever had. There’s a bulldog in To Say Nothing Of The Dog, but it’s based on our three earlier bulldogs, who were all saints. Patient, loving, mellow, and with a delightful sense of irony. Gracie is a very large toddler. She does not get to be in any books until her behavior improves.

[Caraid]

I am going to start To Say Nothing of the Dog today. I’m putting down Three Men in a Boat and walking away. Your Pal, Montie

[ignatius]

^^^ Post after you finish TSNotD. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book.

[Mary13]

@jerseysouthmomchess, thanks for the link to that interview. This part really resonated with me – a sign of the times, I suppose:

Loss has always been a very important theme in my work, although I always worry about writers talking about the themes in their work–remember that Mark Twain thought Tom Sawyer was his best work–but anyway, loss is the really irrevocable thing in the universe. And, no, I don’t think we have multiple lives or multiple choices. I think loss is a central fact of the universe, and I love Camus’s quote, “Do not wait upon the day of judgement. It happens every day.”

Connie Willis mentioned in both interviews posted (by you and @ignatius) that she is fascinated by the plague. I was thinking she’d really like The Weight of Ink, as it moves beautifully back and forth in time, with a strong focus on the Great Plague of London in the 1660’s.

Aside from those dark observations above, Connie Willis is very funny! Several parts of the interview made me laugh.

Also, considering that my only criticism of To Say Nothing of the Dog was that it could have used a little editing, I found her comment about short stories vs. novels interesting:

I love the intensity and focus of writing a short story, where all your energies are focused on one thing. I think they’re just as hard to write as novels. One of the things that always maddened me before I wrote novels was people saying, “You’ll love novels. You’ll have so much more room to mess around, so much more time to do character and setting.” I believe a novel should have no more room, no more space, no more time, and that it should be written with exactly the same intensity and focus as a short story.

[ignatius]

So, Connie Willis and short stories: I like (and own) this:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-399-18234-1

[Mary13]

^ Ha! That was one of the things that made me laugh in the interview:

David: You write such hilarious Xmas stories – have you ever considered writing one about Easter?

CW: Easter’s not that funny.

[mathmom]

I don’t know David Sedaris’s essay about Easter customs is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0yqn_OK6eE

[Mary13]

I am sitting here lol’ing at one of the discussion questions for *To Say Nothing of the Dog/i. I had copied and pasted them from a library site, and I’m scratching my head at #9:

9. Which of the other species did you like the most?

Either the library forgot to remove a question from an earlier selection, or I missed something major in To Say Nothing of the Dog. Maybe I read the abridged version intended for fifth-graders in Hong Kong.

[ignatius]

Animal species, maybe? I like both Cyril and Princess Arjumand. I have cats and Willis nailed the behavior. It made me laugh.

Or maybe she meant the butlers - I like both Baine and Finch. In truth, they almost seemed another species too.

[mathmom]

I assumed the question was just about cats and dogs, but you could probably make a case for swans.

[ignatius]

^^^ To say nothing of the fish …

[Mary13]

Lol to all of the above suggestions! Also, thanks for David Sedaris’s take on Easter.

One more pressing discussion question to answer:

3. What exactly is Housemaid’s Knee?

The question refers to hypochondriac Jerome’s reading through a dictionary of diseases:

I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee.

“Housemaid’s knee is also known as prepatellar bursitis. It is caused by inflammation of a small fluid-filled sac (the bursa) in front of the kneecap. It more commonly occurs in people who spend long periods of time kneeling. Treatment is usually supportive only and the outlook is generally very good.”

https://patient.info/bones-joints-muscles/knee-pain-patellofemoral-pain/housemaids-knee-prepatellar-bursitis

[Mary13]

Michael Palin and Tim Curry star in the 1975 film version of Three Men in a Boat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9xvrbfyKGQ

[mathmom]

I don’t have time right now to watch the whole thing, but it really is just like watching Monty Python. Oh, and there’s a 1956 version as well. Although it seems to take huge liberties and is cut short, so don’t recommend it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SomyFLLbjh8

[silverlady]

I finally finished Three Men in a Boat!!! (No need to alert the media!) I have finally figured out why it took me so long. I think it is because there was no real story. Each chapter was almost a story in itself. I could almost see it as a serialized story with a chapter a month in a periodical. While each chapter was interesting and amusing, sometimes, I never had the feeling that I had to read the next chapter to see what was going to happen next. It wasn’t gripping at all.

I liked To Say Nothing of the Dog so much better. And I will say that I appreciated it so much more after I finished. I could almost see a series of books on Ned and Verity’s time travel adventures. I will definitely look up her other books.

The dog in To Say Nothing of the Dog was much more important than Three Men in a Boat. The dog in TMiaB seemed almost an afterthought in the title. After reading the first, I was disappointed in the part played the dog in the second.

That being said, TMiaB was beautifully written. I was amazed at what a good writer Jerome was. Some of his images were just beautiful.

[Mary13]

@silverlady, you got it exactly right – Three Men in a Boat was originally serialized in the magazine Home Chimes. From a 1959 article about Jerome in The Guardian archives:

It was not intended as a humorous book at all but as a history of the Thames. Jerome happily wrote the “humorous relief” first and then laboriously filled in slabs of history which the editor of Home Chimes (for whom it was serialised) promptly cut out.

Lots of interesting tidbits about Jerome in the old bio: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/02/jerome-k-jerome-three-men-in-a-boat-centenary-1959

[Mary13]

6. How are women portrayed in “Three Men in a Boat”?

Pretty much how I would expect women to be portrayed by a young, male humorist in 1889. There was a sprinkling of sexism throughout, but I wasn’t really surprised or offended. A reviewer on Audible noted, “The full prejudices of the age are on display, but somehow don’t seem malicious. If unthinking racist, classist, and sexist attitudes would destroy your enjoyment, then this book won’t be fun for you.”

[jerseysouthmomchess]

@mary13 enjoyed your link to Jerome’s bio. Became curious about his wife, and found this.
Imagine if he had written “Honeymoon: a Man and a Woman in a boat, who lived to talk about it “

From wiki
“

On 21 June 1888, Jerome married Georgina Elizabeth Henrietta Stanley Marris (“Ettie”), nine days after she divorced her first husband. She had a daughter from her previous, five-year marriage nicknamed Elsie (her actual name was also Georgina). The honeymoon took place on the Thames “in a little boat,”[5] a fact that was to have a significant influence on his next and most important work, Three Men in a Boat.”

[Mary13]

I also learned from the various bios that the family surname was originally “Clapp.” Jerome’s father changed it to “Jerome” – resulting in both father and son being named “Jerome Jerome.” Jerome’s siblings were Milton Melanchthon, Paulina Deodata and Blandina, so I think there was a wee bit of eccentricity in that household, which may have inspired some of Jerome K. Jerome’s offbeat humor.